Monash contributor
Paul Strangio reviews 'John Curtin: How he won over the media' by Caryn Coatney
John Curtin occupies the top tier in the pantheon of Australian national leaders. ‘Expert’ rankings of former officer holders – a practice lately imported from the United States, where ...
... (read more)Rags of snow unmelting on the southern lawn.
Those younger ones, whose death turns
on the hair’s-breadth incidence of accident,
avoid this perduration of slow misrecognition.
Maria O’Sullivan reviews 'Not Quite Australian: How temporary migration is changing the nation' by Peter Mares
Migration is widely regarded as one of the most important policy issues on the global agenda. Not only does it have economic implications for states, it also poses certain challenges for ...
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When Viktor Shklovsky, in his famous 1917 essay 'Art as Technique', asserts that the fundamental task of the poetic function is one of 'making strange' the reader's ...
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In order to grasp the complexity of allusions in J.M. Coetzee's new novel, The Schooldays of Jesus, you need to have your wits about you. On the other hand, as with its prequel ...
... (read more)Kevin Foster reviews Phillip Schuler: The remarkable life of one of Australia’s greatest war correspondents' by Mark Baker
Who was Phillip Schuler? A war correspondent for The Age, his six-week visit to Gallipoli in July and August 1915 produced, inter alia, a few of the rare eyewitness accounts of the battle ...
... (read more)Kate Burridge reviews 'The Australian National Dictionary, Second Edition' edited by Bruce Moore
The appearance of a new dictionary is always exciting, and the publication of the second edition of the Australian National Dictionary is certainly cause for celebration ...
... (read more)Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera (Art Gallery of New South Wales)
Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera are, without a doubt, the two most famous Mexican artists of the twentieth century, as notorious for their scandalous relationship and political views as they were for their creative genius. She was twenty-one years younger than him; he was a communist ...
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It is possible that the remainder of 2016 may produce a more memorable film than Sunset Song, but I doubt it. None so far has moved and enthralled me as Terence Davies' latest has. How I wish he didn't keep us waiting so long between films. It was the semi-autobiographical Distant Voices ...
... (read more)John Arnold reviews 'The Vagabond Papers' by John Stanley James
In March 2016 the Royal Historical Society of Victoria hosted a function to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of Michael Cannon's The Land Boomers, first issued ...
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