Vane Lindesay

Vane Lindesay reviews 'Symbols of Australia' by Mimmo Cozzolino

May 1981, no. 30 • 01 May 1981

Following the enterprising publication of Michael Leunig’s drawings and of Arthur Horner’s ‘Colonel Pewter’ and ‘Uriel’ cartoons Penguin’s latest offering in illustrated publishing in a wonderful book of evocations – a selection of many hundred Australia ‘trademark’ symbols created to identify local products ranging across the one hundred years from 1860. Symbols of Australia ... (read more)

Vane Lindesay reviews 'The Loser Will be Later to Win' by Frank Hardy

February–March 1986, no. 78 • 01 February 1986

When nobody is blown any good, it is indeed an ill wind. Much that was good blew my way as a soldier during the stormy years of World War II – but I was one of the lucky ones, although I did not think so during the Japanese bombing of the Darwin area in 1942. I say lucky because I not only survived the many bombings in a place where others did not, but was later posted to join the staff of Salt, ... (read more)

Vane Lindesay reviews 'Women and Men' by Bruce Petty

February–March 1987, no. 88 • 01 February 1987

More than in any other way, Australian humour has evolved and found its greatest expression not through the nation’s writers, entertainers, or film makers, but by the means of cartoonists drawing for the Australian press. This humour had two significant periods of development - the first beginning with the founding of the Bulletin a little over a century ago when the editors of this illustrated ... (read more)

Vane Lindesay reviews 'The Creative Spirit in Australia: A Cultural History' by Geoffrey Serle

August 1987, no, 93 • 01 August 1987

The perennial and increasingly tiresome question of Australian ‘national identity’ will probably diminish rapidly after the point where the design of a new and truly Australian flag is determined. That it is a question at all, after just on two hundred years of settlement here, is curious. Part of the condition was diagnosed by the late Arthur Phillips in his studies of our colonial culture, ... (read more)

Vane Lindesay reviews 'Ramming the Shears' by Michael Leunig

December 1985–January 1986, no. 77 • 01 December 1985

The thing that has distinguished the ‘inspired genius’ from the run of the mill ‘practitioner’ in all creativity is quality of mind. Michael Leunig, few Australians have to be told, has this. But astonishingly, quality of mind has not been a gradual, developing part of Leunig’s work, for it was evident as an integral part of his art, first widely seen in the pages of the fondly remembere ... (read more)