Unlike the typical poète maudit, reciters could be female as well as male, and when delivering their favourite verses in front of an audience could become so unrestrainedly histrionic as to attract ...

Essays & reportage People-watching in Port Moresby Gordon Peake 14 September 2024 Our correspondent reacquaints himself with the PNG capital, a place getting a lot more attention these days ...

Powers is alert to how “their stories unfolded in synch,” wryly noting that it’s “striking how many people played a role in ...

The sudden collapse of the Assad regime is one of those “in retrospect it was inevitable but no one saw it coming” moments. Exactly where it leaves Syria is still unclear, so it is also one of those ...

Whether comical or conceptual, political or geographic, Saul Steinberg’s drawings extend the viewer’s horizons ...

National affairs Manufacturing’s security blanket Saul Eslake 26 August 2024 Labor’s Future Made in Australia policy risks entrenching opaque subsidies in a favoured sector ...

Peter Dutton’s declaration that he will not stand next to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander flags turns the arc of Australian history off the path it seemed to be on thirty years ago. Then, in ...

Stretching the year back into late 2023 — an equally hostile environment for governments but with far fewer national elections — Poland’s authoritarian Law and Justice party was shown the door after ...

Books & arts Have you been working hard recently? John Docker 1 November 2024 Our reviewer savours an idiosyncratic account of the Queen, on and off duty ...

Vivek Ramaswamy and Elon Musk want to drastically cut government jobs. Dan Honig makes the case for better not fewer ...