Latest Posts

Does Christopher Hitchens still matter?

In 2009, when I interviewed Christopher Hitchens in anticipation of his appearance at the inaugural Festival of Dangerous Ideas, I used our last ten minutes together to ask his opinion of, among other things, Australian journalist John Pilger. “I remember

End of the road: The Anthony Bourdain documentary ‘Roadrunner’

I was always going to like Morgan Neville’s Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain. I was predisposed to like it. Anyone who devoured Bourdain’s work, and who still hasn’t quite gotten over his 2018 death, was predisposed to like it.

Veteran traveller goes with the flow for elegiac journey

Colin Thubron’s The Amur River begins with the Mongolian authorities warning him that his trip is ill-advised. They’re talking specifically about his plan to enter the country’s rugged Khentii Mountains on horseback, though what he has in mind is much

Clive Ustinov: A Matryoshka doll of bullshit

Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, a thread. I put it to you that a great rabble of opinion writers, especially on the right, in the interest of criticising Australia’s lockdown policies, have magically and mindlessly transformed Sir Peter Ustinov

Mank: The Kane Duplicity

At the beginning of For for Fake, Orson Welles’ 1973 essay film about forgery, deception and lies, the filmmaker addresses the audience directly and sets out a thesis for what is to follow. “Tell it by the fireside or in

The writer on the hill: Searching for Australia’s first novelist in the foothills of the Himalayas

The former British hill station of Mussoorie, in the foothills of the Himalayas, affords the visitor two extraordinary views. Facing south, one takes in the seemingly endless Doon Valley, lit up at night by the city of Dehradun. That city

Too big to fail: William Dalrymple’s ‘The Anarchy’ tells a story of monstrous corporate greed

At the beginning of William Dalrymple’s The Anarchy: The East India Company, Corporate Violence, and the Pillage of an Empire, the award-winning Scottish historian states plainly the thesis of his latest work: that the Company’s “military conquest, subjugation and plunder

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi just lit the fuse in Kashmir

Not three months after it won a second term in power—and only five since it rewrote the rules of engagement in South Asia in a balls-to-the-wall display of reckless one-upmanship—the Hindu nationalist government of Narendra Modi is showing once again