Richard Johnstone reviews Michael Jenkins’s A House in Flanders
09 May 13 Comments (0)The lion and the Lion City
Chris Lydgate reviews a new biography of Stamford Raffles, the contradictory colonialist who founded Singapore, and an account of a trip through the modern-day city state and its neighbour, Malaysia
12 Feb 13 Comments (0)A kind of biography
Three books recover forgotten lives in very different ways, writes Richard Johnstone
25 Oct 12 Comments (0)A Chinese constitutionalist and the state of the nation
The latest biography of Liang Qichao reveals a man of his times with a new significance for present-day China, writes Antonia Finnane in Beijing
17 Oct 12 Comments (0)
A flawed giant
A sympathetic biography of Gough Whitlam also recognises its subject’s faults, writes Frank Bongiorno
08 Oct 12 Comments (0)Father and sons
The political and the personal illuminate each other in James Button’s fine account of a year in Canberra, writes Brett Evans
02 Oct 12 Comments (0)Greene thoughts in a Greene shade
Brian McFarlane reviews a hard-to-classify account of the influence of Graham Greene
09 Aug 12 Comments (0)
Eyes wide open
Lyndon Johnson took on the frustrating role of vice-president as a way of shaking off the taint of Southern racism and conservatism, writes Jamie Hanson. And the rest is history
25 Jun 12 Comments (0)Life; London; this moment of June
Although she undoubtedly drew on her own life, Virginia Woolf’s modernist novels are not essays about herself, writes Jill Kitson. Woolf wrote about “life and death, sanity and insanity, through the shimmer of thoughts”
13 Apr 12 Comments (3)
The diplomat who read Dostoyevsky
Tormented by self-doubt, regretting missed opportunities, George Kennan helped shape the postwar world, writes Graeme Dobell
08 Feb 12 Comments (0)At sea with Einstein
Tim Thwaites reviews an oblique introduction to one of the great figures of the twentieth century
16 Dec 11 Comments (0)Dickens’s full marathon
Charles Dickens turns 200 in February. Richard Johnstone looks at a life that might have turned on the placement of an inkstand
08 Dec 11 Comments (0)The diplomat
Geoffrey Barker reviews Philip Flood’s memoir of a career in the diplomatic service and as an agency head
24 Oct 11 Comments (1)Letters from home
Judith Brett reviews Heather Henderson’s collection of letters from her father, Robert Menzies
13 Sep 11 Comments (0)Billy Hughes and the end of an Empire
BOOKS | Jill Kitson reviews a new account of the wartime leadership of the diminutive Australian prime minister
23 Apr 11 Comments (0)Lucking into the zeitgeist
BOOKS | Iain Topliss reviews the memoir of Jules Feiffer, the cartoonist who made anxiety funny
17 Feb 11 Comments (0)The most independent woman in the world
BOOKS | Best known as Samuel Johnson’s confidante, Hester Thrale was also a prolific and fearless writer. Jill Kitson reviews Ian McIntyre’s biography
27 Oct 10 Comments (1)
