JACQUELINE KENT Beyond Words: A year with Kenneth Cook. Reviewed by Linda Funnell
Award-winning biographer Jacqueline Kent has written books about Beatrice Davis, Hephzibah Menuhin and Julia Gillard, but here she tells a much more personal story of her relationship with the writer Kenneth Cook. Jacqueline Kent’s memoir is the story of a love...
JUDITH BRETT The Enigmatic Mr Deakin. Reviewed by Bernard Whimpress
The Enigmatic Mr Deakin, the new biography of Australia’s second, fifth and seventh Prime Minister, is a magnificent sweep of a book that demanded to be written. Deakin has been the subject of previous biographies and author Judith Brett quickly establishes her points...
The Godfather: Peter Corris on the outstanding success of Malcolm Turnbull
This may seem to be an unusual heading given my stated political leanings and the observable political facts, but bear with me. It’s based on a single premise, which will become clear. Turnbull, although he claims to have been raised in somewhat straitened...The Godfather: Peter Corris on getting the news
I used to get the news from a combination of reading the broadsheets, the Sydney Morning Herald and the Australian, listening to ABC radio and watching the 7pm ABC television news. With my eyesight now making reading papers too difficult (I maintain, without objective...KERRY-ANNE WALSH The Stalking of Julia Gillard: How the Media and Team Rudd Contrived to Bring Down the Prime Minister. Reviewed by Linda Funnell
Leaks, rumours, polls and deniability: Kerry-Anne Walsh paints an ugly picture of Kevin Rudd’s road back to the prime ministership. This book, which details the covert media campaign run by Kevin Rudd and his supporters over the course of the Gillard government, went...DAVID MARR Political Animal: the Making of Tony Abbott (Quarterly Essay 47). Reviewed by Linda Funnell
He’s anti-abortion and his career owes a debt to Alan Jones. Does Tony Abbott have a problem with women? There’s an unsettling recent tradition of the political subjects of Quarterly Essays meeting with ill fortune. Think of Annabel Crabb’s profile of then-Opposition...
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