Inga Clendinnen’s True Stories assembles her 1999 Boyer essays, revised in 2008 after the fall of the Howard Government. She personifies what Howard would have described as ‘black armband history’. Looking back over the settlement of Victoria, she follows Chief Protector George Augustus Robinson, sent to curb the violence of the squatocracy, in the 1840s.… Continue reading True Stories by Inga Clendinnen
Month: March 2015
Fair Play by Tove Jansson
Tove Jansson is best known for her children’s books on the Moomin trolls, but Sort of Books has just translated and published a bunch of her non-children’s books. They’re all great, but Fair Play has the added benefit of being the first book I’ve read this year I think my mother would actually like. More… Continue reading Fair Play by Tove Jansson
Beyond the Ladies Lounge: Australian Female Publicans by Clare Wright
Liquor licensing is, like planning and building law, fascinating in that it’s all about deciding who has the right to do certain things, and where they can do it. Unfortunately, it’s also very boring because its political impact is concealed by reams of dull regulation. Accordingly, I was thrilled to find Clare Wright’s Beyond the… Continue reading Beyond the Ladies Lounge: Australian Female Publicans by Clare Wright