Napoleon film, Kissinger’s death and world history
The way you tell the story of Napoleon reveals how the historian imagines the plot of…
Jon Fosse’s Slow Prose, 2023 Nobel Prize for Literature
The 2023 Nobel Prize for Literature is announced. Relive world literature’s night of nights with this…
culture / history / literature
New Article: Reflections on Patrick White’s Nobel Prize and Australian cultural history
My thoughts on Australian cultural history on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of Patrick White’s…
Why read Olga Tokarczuk, Winner of 2018 Nobel Prize for Literature? Podcast Ep. 120
Why read Olga Tokarczuk, Winner of 2018 Nobel Prize for Literature? Find out in this fourth…
Podcast on History of Nobel Prize for Literature and Annie Ernaux.
On the podcast this week I started a mini-series on the Nobel Prize for Literature, in the lead-up to the announcement of the prize on 5 October. I cover the history of the Prize, some favourite winners, and last year’s laurreate, French writer, Annie Ernaux.
Day Three of Thirteen Days of Looking at a Bureaucrat
The third chapter of Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Bureaucrat is the title essay, ‘Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Bureaucrat’. It plays with Wallace Stevens’ poem Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird, and seeks to open up the reader’s mind to the many unexpected, even poetic ways you can look at this plain, humble, even despised personality, the bureaucrat.
Day Two of Thirteen Days of Looking at a Bureaucrat
The second chapter of Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Bureaucrat is Silenced Voice of the…
NEW BOOK! Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Bureaucrat
My new book, Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Bureaucrat, is now out! Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Bureaucrat: Writing on Governing, is both memoir and essay collection. I think it breaks new ground because bureaucrats don’t publish memoirs. It will change how you see government, politics, working life, and bureaucrats.
New article – “The parasite state of consultants”
John Menadue and the team at Pearls and Irritations has published an article of mine on the public service today and the problems of the overuse of consultants.
The poet, the bureaucrat and the émigré
During the week I have been finalising my next book, 13 Ways of Looking at a Bureaucrat, and reading some essays and poems of Marina Tvetaeva (1892-1941), the great Russian poet, collected in Art and the Light of Conscience. A strange mix, true, but that is the life of my strange mind.