Cirrus@Austlit

'Cultural capital is a rare and precious commodity. It is earned by doing – with wit, rigour and imagination. Being born to privilege may help in its accumulation, but that is not sufficient. These days, especially, privilege can be an impediment.' 

'In May 2004, little over a year before he died, Donald Horne took to the stage at the Sydney Writer’s Festival for an event to mark the launch of the fourth edition of Griffith Review: Making Perfect Bodies. Donald had written an essay called “Mind, body, age” that vigorously burst from the page with life, while addressing death. He was 82.' (Introduction)

'Reducing my Australia to just three books makes me feel like someone panning for gold in a fast-moving stream filled with the precious metal. If I stand still long enough and shake the pan hard enough, surely just three exceptional nuggets will be left. It’s fair to say that I have a privileged perspective.' (Introduction) 

'What is the 'idea of Australia'? What defines the soul of our nation? Are we an egalitarian, generous, outward-looking country? Or is Australia a place that has retreated into silence and denial about the past and become selfish, greedy and insular?

'A lifetime of watching Australia as a journalist, editor, academic and writer has given Julianne Schultz a unique platform from which to ask and answer these critical questions. The global pandemic gave her time to study the X-ray of our country and the opportunity for perspective and analysis. Schultz came to realise that the idea of Australia is a contest between those who are imaginative, hopeful, altruistic and ambitious, and those who are defensive and inward-looking. She became convinced we need to acknowledge and better understand our past to make sense of our present and build a positive and inclusive future. She suggests what Australia could be: smart, compassionate, engaged, fair and informed.

'This important, searing and compelling book explains us to ourselves and suggests ways Australia can realise her true potential. Urgent, inspiring and optimistic, The Idea of Australia presents the vision we need to fully appreciate our great strengths and crucial challenges.' (Publication summary)

'Long before 1873, when William Christie Gosse ‘discovered’ the six-hundred-million-year-old sandstone monolith at the centre of Australia and called it Ayers – for the about-to-be-deposed South Australian Colonial Secretary – Uluru has had symbolic power that outstrips even its imposing physical dimensions. For the Anangu people, custodians for millennia of the deeply spiritual Uluru and nearby Kata Tjuta, life is based on a foundation of law, religion and morals known as tjukurpa, which  encompasses the creation period, the present and the future.' (Introduction)

'At the Commonwealth Games on the Gold Coast in April, athletes from countries that were once a part of the British Empire will battle for gold—but is the Commonwealth of Nations more than a legacy of another age?

'At a time of geopolitical uncertainty, the Commonwealth is poised to play a major role as a values-based network that represents a third of the world’s population. Whether this group can exercise real power and influence will be determined in 2018. The old empires are long gone but, in the wake of Brexit and the rise of China and India, the shape of a new world order remains unclear.

'Commonwealth Now features writers from around the world who explore the contemporary experience of Commonwealth citizens: reconciling the past, confronting new challenges, and opening new exchanges to create a sustainable and equitable future.' (Publication summary)

'This issue of Australia's most awarded quarterly is about making sense of the populist moment we are living in and includes essays about building a conscience, climate-change deniers, obstructive bureaucracy, religious cults and the enduring kindness of strangers.'  (Publication summary)

The Reform Club, the imposing Palazzo-style structure on Pall Mall, one of London’s grandest thoroughfares, has entered the popular imagination as the

quintessential gentleman’s club. Its camera-ready elegance – the soaring atrium, sweeping staircases and cosy parlours – has given the private club an unusually

public life.' (Introduction)