Should we have seen it coming? With the benefit of hindsight, Donald Trump’s victory seems to have been inevitable, and the excitement of journalists reporting a closely contested presidential ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 What goes up must come down Brett Evans 29 August 2023 Politics wasn’t far away when Blood, Sweat & Tears brought the house down in Romania International From the Ludlow Massacre to the ...