Australia

Cricket’s ball-tampering scandal has been nothing but a tearful pantomime

7 April 2018 9:00 am

I haven’t seen so many men crying since the end of A Tale of Two Cities at the Scala Cinema…

I averted the wrath of the students by telling them I’d had a sex change

31 March 2018 9:00 am

I went to Australia with my constant companion Hilary, the only woman in England I’m not paying alimony to. She…

Peter Carey’s latest novel is a merciless excavation of Australian history

13 January 2018 9:00 am

More than 25 years ago, Peter Carey co-wrote one of the most audacious road movies ever made, Wim Wenders’s Until…

A cure for wanderlust: 23 hours in economy

Spending 23 hours in economy class will cure anyone’s wanderlust

6 January 2018 9:00 am

For some reason, I decided to go to the other side of the world for Christmas. I may never do…

Making sense of an unjust world

26 August 2017 9:00 am

These three timely works of creative nonfiction explore the question of race: chronicling histories of colonialism and migration; examining the…

Big Auntie

12 August 2017 9:00 am

It’s sneaky, the way in which the BBC, so much regarded as part of the family as to be nicknamed…

1967 and all that

29 July 2017 9:00 am

As you may have spotted, the BBC is marking the 50th anniversary of the decriminalisation of male homosexuality with an…

Islam’s “barbaric fury”

18 July 2017 7:31 am

Andrew Urban has lived up to his famous namesake, Pope Urban II (1088-1099), in his warnings that evil thrives when…

Above and below: From Robin Dalton’s My Relations: ‘My second cousin, Penelope Wood, is an artist, or at least hopes to be one. She is only 16, but she has done some beautiful little paintings. I have one hanging in my room now. It is a landscape and is one she did when only 12 years old’

When mother killed the plumber — and Nellie Melba came round to sing

4 June 2016 9:00 am

Here’s a pair of little books — one even littler than the other — by Robin Dalton (née Eakin), a…

The Wicked Boy is finally redeemed

30 April 2016 9:00 am

During the heatwave in the summer of 1895, the Gentlemen v. Players match at Lords Cricket Ground on 8 July…

Snakes, kookaburras and bandicoots: a garden in Australia’s rainforest

23 April 2016 9:00 am

What you can see from a tin house in the Australian rainforest

Reasons to be cheerful about cricket, football and the Grand National

2 April 2016 9:00 am

Well the sun is out, the sky is blue, and poor Boris Johnson is taking such a pounding from Matthew…

Two big hitters leave the crease: Brendon McCullum and Hugh McIlvanney

5 March 2016 9:00 am

Two great men have just bowed out from their chosen trades and it is bloody sad. The New Zealand cricket…

Any deal with the junior doctors should cut both ways

13 February 2016 9:00 am

A few months ago, paramedics were on the brink of industrial action. They had legitimate grievances. Ambulance services were being…

The perfect wines to toast the end of the hunting season

13 February 2016 9:00 am

A few years ago, a distinguished cove in the diplomatic service was made High Commissioner to Australia. To prepare himself…

Portrait of the week

21 November 2015 9:00 am

Home After the killings in Paris, David Cameron, the Prime Minister, said that seven terrorist attacks on Britain had been…

Tony Abbott is right about immigration - and turning back boats

29 October 2015 9:00 am

For many years, Australia has been turning away boats filled with migrants. From a remove, this looks cold–hearted — a…

Rugby referee Craig Joubert is just the man to sort out Syria

29 October 2015 9:00 am

Not since Walter Palmer, a cudddly Minnesota dentist, put down his drill and vanished off the face of the earth…

Turning back refugee boats saves lives - as Australia found out

12 September 2015 9:00 am

Turning back boats saves lives

Our Country’s Good prizes the concerns of the actors over the audience

5 September 2015 9:00 am

Australia, 1788. A transport ship arrives in Port Jackson (later Sydney harbour) carrying hundreds of convicts and a detachment of…

Think ‘migrant’ is an insult? ‘Refugee’ can be too

5 September 2015 9:00 am

Al Jazeera, the Qatari broadcaster, is going to use refugee instead of migrant in its English output. ‘The umbrella term…

Why nothing in sport beats thrashing the Aussies at cricket

15 August 2015 9:00 am

Why nothing in sport beats thrashing the Aussies at cricket

Australia’s amazing, exhausting sporting comebacks

25 July 2015 9:00 am

I have never met an Aussie I didn’t like, but, crikey, their sporting indefatigability is exhausting. Don’t they ever give…

If a novel about failure fails, does that make it a success?

6 June 2015 9:00 am

I must be an idiot for pointing out the failings of a novel that’s so screamingly, self-denouncingly about failure. Steve…

Keith Murdoch (Simon Harrison) appearing before the Dardanelles Commission (Photo: BBC)

Without Gallipoli, we’d have no Page 3

2 May 2015 9:00 am

Some years ago I paid a visit to the site of the Gallipoli landings because I was mildly obsessed with…