Tom Wright

Tom Wright has written for the stage for thirty years. He was Associate Director of Sydney Theatre Company 2004 to 2012 and has been Artistic Associate at Belvoir Street Theatre since 2015. His plays and translations include A Journal of the Plague Year, The Lost Echo, The Women of Troy, The War of the Roses, Picnic At Hanging Rock, The Real & Imagined History of The Elephant Man, The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui and Black Diggers. He hosted Breakfast with Papers at Adelaide Festival for seven years and is regularly heard as reviewer and commentator on ABC Radio National.

Tom Wright reviews 'Donald Horne: A life in the lucky country' by Ryan Cropp

October 2023, no. 458 • 24 September 2023

Here we are again, luck ringing over the land. Ryan Cropp’s new examination of the life and work of Donald Horne (1921–2005) comes out as we resume unpicking the gordian knot of what exactly is Australia. As Cropp observes, it has become impossible to describe this nation without the word luck, as if a continent rolls dice. It is the language of gamblers, of the complacent. It wasn’t introdu ... (read more)