Loose Cannon

A new report from Queensland offers guidance on integrity to all Australian governments

Peter Coaldrake’s report to Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk, Let the Sunshine In, is a clear and frank assessment of culture and accountability in the Queensland public sector today. With one exception, it also offers refreshing guidance to jurisdictions across Australia showing signs of complacency about integrity.

For a long time I’ve admired re-readers like Patrick Kurp at Anecdotal Evidence, but it’s a rare thing for me to re-read even my favorite novels. This summer, however, I’ve decided to make a change and finally revisit a half dozen or so of the Greatest Hits in my reading life. I’m starting with Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov, which I last read (can it be?) thirty years ago.

MacDuff vs. Pevear & Volokhonsky

UK Schools Delete Irish Writers In Bid To Diversify Curriculum

Irish writers have been dropped from the exam curriculum in British schools in favour of writers from more diverse backgrounds. Poets Seamus Heaney and Eavan Boland and playwright Brian Friel have been removed from both the GCSE and A-levels curriculums. - Irish Times

Gallup: Trust In Institutions Hits A New Low

The “Insignificant” Details That Bring Historical Writing Alive

As a writer, the key is not so much assembling reams and reams of material, but finding the details that make a period or situation vivid for you and, eventually, for the reader – those few facts which make a sprawling and multi-faceted topic specific enough to relate to...

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 ‘All her movies are nonfiction’: remembering the life and work of Nora Ephron

Besides outlining a compact chronology of Ephron’s early years and the career she maintained to her deathbed, Doidge’s book highlights the contradictions of the soul contained within a cynical romantic as quick to belittle those close to her as she was to love them