R. J. STOVE says reports of the death of Australian classical music education have been greatly exaggerated The most satisfying paid regular employment that I have ever experienced concluded on 11 November 2021. For a twelve-week course, I worked as a sessional tutor under the University of Sydney’s auspices. The tutorials – overarching title: ‘Music in…
Credit: Shutterstock PETER KING says inconsistency is not incoherency We live in fragments. There is nothing that is so large to be all encompassing. There is nothing that is dominant, nothing that is the essence. Of course, we humans are common in our biology, psychology and our mortality, but this is not what defines us…
The Good and Evil Angels, by William Blake LUKE GILFEDDER examines the differences – and parallels – between two original thinkers In 1956 Colin Wilson published The Outsider, an overnight literary sensation which saw the 24-year-old autodidact hailed as a prodigy and the first home-grown British existentialist. He sent a copy to T.S. Eliot, who,…
Credit: Shutterstock GUY WALKER calls for a realistic view of humanity’s record Earlier this year a Palace coup at the National Trust saw the Chairman, Tim Parker, helpfully defenestrate himself before the pursuing Imperial Guard did it for him. The revolting soldiery were later in hot pursuit, through the gilded corridors, of the Director-General, Hilary…
Credit: Wikimedia Commons R. J. STOVE remembers a classic work of anti-travel literature So far as Anglo-American relations are concerned I have always felt that they would probably have been better had the two nations spoken different languages. In the latter years of the eighteenth century there was a school of thought which held that…
Credit: Shutterstock GOMERY KIMBER believes there really can be second-sight On the afternoon of September 11th 2001 I was making notes for a story I planned to write about the ghost of a slave ship captain. I’d already named the ghost Noah, but I couldn't think of a suitable surname. I sat there, pen in hand, awaiting…
Image: Frank K. Molloy DAVID UPTON tries his hand at making his mark Everyone knows about Banksy, who came to fame around 2000 for his cheeky anarchic spray paintings and stencils on walls in Bristol, and later all over the world. His real name is still officially secret, though by now his works sell in…
NICHOLAS BOOTH captures a fleeting moment in Kent I packed my battered little orchestra of colours in an old Fortnum’s bag along with some rolled up paper and a bottle of ginger beer and set off for the pear orchard which lies across a road at the back of the housing estate where my mother…
Convict flogging in Australia MICHAEL WILDING remembers a foundational Australian writer Marcus Clarke’s His Natural Life is one of the great novels of the nineteenth century. The classic indictment of the horrors of the English convict system established in Australia, it is the story of Richard Devine, transported for a crime he did not commit…
"Theodore Dalrymple", anatomist of modernity (Image: Wikimedia Commons) MARK GULLICK profiles the cultural commentator THEODORE DALRYMPLE The English writer Theodore Dalrymple, whose real name is Dr. Anthony Daniels, spent much of his professional career as a hospital and prison psychiatrist. He has also written many books on a variety of subjects, and travelled the world…