The idea of place as a metaphor of Australia's colonial past and post-colonial present is a recent development in Australian history. The three books reviewed here come from a new generation of cultural historians who want ...

If we do not yet have our own Lincoln, Sir William Deane's writing sometimes shimmers with that extraordinary combination of elegant diction and profundity that marks great rhetoric. It is doubtful that any national leader ...

London’s Victoria and Albert Museum is currently hosting a 'sumptuous' survey of the Art Deco period. Quoting curator Ghislaine Wood that the central themes are 'fashion, glamour, commerce', "Time" magazine’s review presses ...

As I read this book, serious questions were being asked about the honour of three governments: the British, the US and our own. Did they all lie so as to justify war against Iraq? Honour still matters, even at a time when ...

This book is about 59-year-old, Tasmanian-born David Brill, who has covered events from most of the world’s hot spots: Vietnam, Papua New Guinea, Africa, South and Central America, the Middle East and eastern Europe. (The ...

Oh Dennis! For four decades, we've had to forgive your indiscretions and blemishes. We’ve done so willingly, because you were not only the fast bowler of a generation, but of that generation’s milestones. For many Australians, ...

In some ways, Sue Woolfe’s new novel, "The Secret Cure", deals with similar themes to her last novel, the award-winning "Leaning Towards Infinity" (1996). The central character of the novel is a young laboratory technician, ...

The perils of a certain kind of historical writing are painfully demonstrated in "The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea", billed as 'the life of Australian whaling captain, William Chamberlain: a tale of abduction, adventure and ...