Cirrus@Austlit

John Lyons reports on disquiet over the awarding of the inaugural Prime Minister's Prize for Australian History. The award was presented jointly to Les Carlyon's The Great War and Peter Cochrane's Colonial Ambition. Some sources reported that the former book was the Prime Minister's personal preference.

Colquhoun comments on Bob Carr's erudite review of Colleen McCullough's Antony and Cleopatra.

Graeme Blundell asserts: 'Crime fiction is now a complex precinct where readers face a bewildering variety of choices'. Blundell provides a quick overview of crime fiction's sub-genres and canvasses Australian and international exponents of some of them.

A column canvassing current literary news including a report of correspondence to the column from Antoni Jach who wrote of his great grandfather's poetic response to A. B. Paterson's 'Clancy of the Overflow'.

The title and first line appear to play with the concept of the finial as decorative terminal ending on gables or flagstaffs, or the serif-ornamented typographic ending stroke, and 'final' as in 'final smile.' The body of the poem then suggests an orthodox meditation on lost love, but the closing stanza asserts that 'blind worms are flight as yet undressed' - and implies that love, hope, or the poet, will rise again.