Cirrus@Austlit

'It’s 60 years since The Lucky Country was published. Have we moved on from the bronzed Aussie male stereotype?' (Introduction)

'It has become a bigger cliché than the phrase itself: that in adopting the title The Lucky Country for his 1964 bestseller, which turns 60 this year, Donald Horne did not intend to deliver a compliment. ‘Australia is a lucky country run mainly by second-rate people who share its luck,’ Horne wrote in the rather grand opening to the final chapter, which carried the same title as the book. ‘It lives on other people’s ideas, and, although its ordinary people are adaptable, most of its leaders (in all fields) so lack curiosity about the events that surround them that they are often taken by surprise.' (Introduction)

'For a man many would regard as the very epitome of the type, Raimond Gaita seems rather hostile to the concept of the intellectual. It is ‘irredeemably mediocre’, he explains, inferior to the kinds of moral and political responsibility that attach to teacher or politician. Intellectuals are active in the public domain, grappling with ideas, culture, and politics, but they have often lacked independence of mind, he says, ‘because they never had it or because they sacrificed it to the cause’.' (Introduction)          

'How did Australia’s thirty-first PM make it to the Lodge?'

'A compelling biography captures the trajectory of the man who named the lucky country'

'Few Australians are losing sleep over how Scott Morrison is going to earn a crust after politics. Few outside the federal Coalition, at any rate. His continuing presence on the opposition backbench serves as a distraction from the present and reminder of the past. Unfortunately, that past keeps intruding on the present – most recently, in the form of the robodebt royal commission report. There is no reason to believe relief is in sight.' (Introduction)

'Publishers rarely become big news in Australia, university presses even less often. It was notable therefore that the departure in early 2019 of Melbourne University Publishing’s CEO, Louise Adler, and some members of the MUP board, became a matter on which so many of the nation’s political and cultural élite felt they needed to have an opinion. A strong coterie came out in her defence. This had much to do with Adler herself, who had courted their attention, published their books, and made MUP a story in its own right.'  (Introduction) 

'In January the Albanese government launched a new arts policy, Revive. Among its measures was a commitment to exempt Australia’s seven national performing arts training organisations from the efficiency dividend.'  (Introduction)

'There is a minor industry in the life of John Curtin. We have had hagiography as well as biography, long and short and in between; studies of his early years, his wartime leadership and his relationship with the media; collections of letters, speeches and press conferences; and there has even been a TV movie, starring William McInnes.'  (Introduction)

'This week’s episode of the ABR podcast is devoted to the Books of the Year. ABR Editor Peter Rose, critic and writer Beejay Silcox and historian Frank Bongiorno discuss the books that stirred them most in 2022. This follows a Books of the Year feature in the December issue of ABR, with contributions from thirty-six writers and critics. Listen to Peter Rose, Beejay Silcox and Frank Bongiorno discuss the best books of 2022.' (Introduction)

'The Newsreader shows an industry, and a country, on the cusp of change'

'How a distinguished educator fell victim to church politics and personal enmities'

'Anti-censorship, rather like anti-hanging, is one of those causes of the 1960s and early 1970s that has come to occupy an uncertain place in the collective memory of that time. Rather like the movement against capital punishment, it has suffered for many of its greatest triumphs being the work of liberals rather than revolutionaries. Each, however, was at work in Australia and in this excellent book, Patrick Mullins finds a place for both.' (Introduction)

(Introduction)

'The National Archives of Australia has already been busy telling its own story of what happened in the Palace Letters affair. Visitors to an exhibit at its Canberra East Block headquarters will learn that ‘[o]n 14 July 2020 that the National Archives of Australia released, without exemption, a collection of papers known as the “Palace Letters”’. More cryptically, it then refers to ‘a series of court challenges and appeals’.'  (Introduction)