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Julienne van Loon won the Vogel Literary Award for 2004 with Road Story. Now, with Beneath the Bloodwood Tree, van Loon has passed the hurdle or hoodoo of getting a second novel written and published, although not with ease, and apparently with no resolved sense of the kind of novel she was intending to write.

Whether they be Irish Fenians, Russian revolutionaries, the ‘guilty white kids’ of Italy’s Red Brigade or (then) West Germany’s Baader Meinhof gang, African National Congress members fighting to end apartheid, Palestinian gunmen, al Qaeda bombers, or an assortment of other evil-doers, Michael Burleigh sets out the terrible things that human beings can do to one another. He provides much information about what happened or allegedly happened, and points the finger in all directions – at individuals, groups and governments alike. Few are spared his disdain.

Forty years ago, the proponents of the ‘new military history’ sought to extend our understanding of war and its impact by looking beyond the battlefield and by considering the social and cultural implications of armies and military activity. In the process, the best work added layer upon layer of complexity and nuance to the study of war in history, but over time it came to seem that this approach to military history was interested in anything and everything except war’s central concern: battle and purposeful, organised violence between groups and individuals. Peter Ewer has written a book that belongs to what some are now hailing as the ‘new new military history’, approaches that seek to integrate broader socio-cultural significance and individual experience with serious attention to the basic elements of war through the ages: battle and killing.

Nickers and bogles, fulgars and wits: these newly minted creatures populate the Monster Blood Tattoo series. This world has the depth and complexity that characterises all good fantasy, and fans of D.M. Cornish’s Aurealis Award-winning Foundling (2006) will eagerly continue the journey and be well rewarded for doing so. Beautifully presented, the second novel is as impressive inside as out.

The Australian Performing Group (APG) and its associated theatre space, the Pram Factory, form one of the legends of Australian theatre. And like all legends, the stories that people tell of it inevitably conflate the truth of what it actually was – or wasn’t, as the case may be. Somewhere back in 1969 – or was it 1970? – a group of enthusiastic thespians decided to take on the world (or at least their own preconceptions of it), and shake up the theatrical Establishment. Legend has it that Australian theatre has never been the same since.

It has been the opinion of many, most Christian Queen, that the ancient Greeks and Romans, in representing their tragedies upon the stage, sang them throughout. But until now this noble manner of recitation has been neither revived nor (to my knowledge) even attempted by anyone, and I used to believe that this was due to the imperfection of the modern music, by far inferior to the ancient.

Thus writes poet Ottavio Rinuccini to Maria de’ Medici, dedicatee of Rinuccini’s Euridice. Set to music by Jacopo Peri and performed in Florence in 1600 as part of the festivities to mark the marriage of Maria de’ Medici to Henri IV of France, Euridice is one of the earliest surviving operas. Rinuccini, Peri, Caccini and the other inventors of opera sought to address ‘the imperfection of the modern music’ by advocating a type of solo vocal music that took as its starting point the meaning and sentiment of the poetry (as Claudio Monteverdi later put it, the words were ‘the mistress of the harmony’). Hand in hand with this was a manner of delivery that placed emphasis upon dramatic declamation and expression.

Not many Australian historians have managed to publish major books, based on years of scholarly research, which have evoked both immediate and enduring acclaim. It therefore says something both about intrinsic value and about the tastes of the book-buying public when such a book goes into a second or even a third edition, ten or more years after its first appearance. The weeks preceding Anzac Day are always a popular time for the publication of books on military history, but this year has been especially notable for witnessing a number of reissues, alongside a flood of new titles. The two under review here are the third edition of Jeffrey Grey’s A Military History of Australia, and the second edition of David Horner’s and Jean Bou’s history of the Royal Australian Regiment, Duty First. Others include the third edition of Ken Inglis’s highly acclaimed study of war memorials, Sacred Places, and new issues of Ross McMullin’s biography of Major General ‘Pompey’ Elliott and Gavan Daws’s Prisoners of the Japanese.