Books & arts
1 April 2015
Vera Brittain’s Testament of Youth, now in its second screen version, recounts a remarkable life amid the upheavals of a century ago, writes Brian McFarlane
Essays & reportage
23 March 2015
“There was nothing before Oxford, really,” says Malcolm Fraser in this extract from his political memoirs, written with Margaret Simons
Books & arts
3 February 2015
Books | Three men and a city in turmoil. Andrew Dodd reviews two new books about Sydney’s formative years
Books & arts
28 January 2015
Cinema | Sylvia Lawson reviews Wild, Birdman and The Imitation Game
Books & arts
8 January 2015
Books | John Howard’s view of the Menzies years is partial in important respects, but he offers a valuable perspective on an important period
Books & arts
27 October 2014
Dick Hamer’s election as Victorian Liberal leader was a seachange in the state’s politics and culture, writes Judith Brett
Books & arts
22 October 2014
Girls creator Lena Dunham has the knack of bottling the essence of the thing, writes Sophie Black
Books & arts
15 October 2014
Books | What happened to the woman who beguiled on election night 2007?
Essays & reportage
13 October 2014
Expelled from the Communist Party for not toeing the line, Lyndall Ryan's parents were faced with a dilemma when Robert Menzies’s government tried to ban the party
Books & arts
23 September 2014
Jonathan Croall’s new book reveals a talented researcher and writer at work, says Brian McFarlane
Books & arts
19 September 2014
Historian John Rickard recalls an Australia in which private lives occasionally teetered on the edge of scandal
Books & arts
19 September 2014
Stuart Macintyre reviews a new biography of the titan of Australian newspaper proprietors, David Syme
Books & arts
5 September 2014
Three new political biographies reveal the strengths and weaknesses of the genre
Books & arts
20 June 2014
A physician decodes an unsettling memoir of life in and beyond the operating theatre
Books & arts
12 June 2014
Books | Best known for her undercover exposé Nickel and Dimed, Barbara Ehrenreich ventures into entirely different territory in her new book, writes Sara Dowse
Books & arts
5 March 2014
Books | Eilean Giblin touched much that was formative in twentieth-century Australia
Books & arts
5 March 2014
The life stories of four mining magnates illuminate where Australia’s economy is headed, writes Michael Gilding. The political and social effects could be profound
Books & arts
21 February 2014
Politics is hard and democracy is messy. Brett Evans reviews two new books that help explain why it doesn’t all end in disaster
Books & arts
11 February 2014
A new collection of letters traces the life of the “outrageously gifted” composer of West Side Story, writes Andrew Ford
Books & arts
14 January 2014
Melancholy and occasionally joyous, the story of two “squinty daughters” doesn’t quite justify the pictures, writes Darren Tofts
Books & arts
21 June 2013
On the anniversary of its publication, Bridget Griffen-Foley reviews John Douglas Pringle’s self-deprecating account of a much-admired career
Books & arts
9 May 2013
Richard Johnstone reviews Michael Jenkins’s A House in Flanders
Books & arts
26 February 2013
Books | Three players, three hard slogs. Jock Given on the golden age of Australian tennis
Books & arts
12 February 2013
Chris Lydgate reviews a new biography of Stamford Raffles, the contradictory colonialist who founded Singapore, and an account of a trip through the modern-day city state…
Books & arts
25 October 2012
Three books recover forgotten lives in very different ways
17 October 2012
The latest biography of Liang Qichao reveals a man of his times with a new significance for present-day China, writes Antonia Finnane in Beijing
Books & arts
10 October 2012
Glenn Nicholls reviews an intimate account of the life of Werner Pelz
Books & arts
8 October 2012
A sympathetic biography of Gough Whitlam also recognises its subject’s shortcomings
Books & arts
2 October 2012
Books | The political and the personal illuminate each other in James Button’s fine account of a year in Canberra
Books & arts
9 August 2012
Brian McFarlane reviews a hard-to-classify account of the influence of Graham Greene