*To the Moon, Ayatollah!

What an extraordinary juxtaposition of US mastery and impotence on display today. Irony does not begin to describe the yawning … More

Orwell Errs in 1984

George Orwell’s ‘1984’ as shorthand to signify totalitarian control of society and the malign pervasive rule of ‘Big Brother’ have … More

Unfortunately this download got stuck for a month or so in the back office, where the sub-editors slacked off. They’re … More

The 2018 film by Julian Schnabel titled At Eternity’s Gate is a real gem, which somehow escaped my attention till … More

While viewing an exhibition of European paintings in a Porto (Portugal) art gallery two years ago, I was surprised to … More

Aesthetic vindication can take decades to arrive, but last week in Paris my original judgement of the Louvre’s (in)famous glass … More

Last month twenty-five years ago the Y2K computer bug was threatening armageddon on 31 December, by melting down the world’s … More

(My original piece has been revised below, as I’ve reconsidered crime numbers in the light of Mark Twain’s famous maxim … More

Apparently Australians have a book buying frenzy in the period before Christmas, generating 70% of annual bookshop sales from October. … More

Japan is a fascinating country, that we visited in July. Aussies are flocking to the ‘Thinking Man’s Bali’. The mix … More