Accessibility Tools

  • Content scaling 100%
  • Font size 100%
  • Line height 100%
  • Letter spacing 100%
Society

The figure in the carpet

The stories we tell ourselves
by •
October 2022, no. 447

The Idea of Australia: A search for the soul of the nation by Julianne Schultz

Allen & Unwin, $34.99 pb, 472 pp

Society

The figure in the carpet

The stories we tell ourselves
by •
October 2022, no. 447
The queen and the duke of Edinburgh watching stockmen round up cattle near Alice Springs, 1963 (Trinity Mirror/Mirrorpix/Alamy)
The queen and the duke of Edinburgh watching stockmen round up cattle near Alice Springs, 1963 (Trinity Mirror/Mirrorpix/Alamy)

A new monarch succeeded the day I sat down to write this review about the idea of Australia. Prime Minister Albanese, in a blessedly unpoliticised speech about Elizabeth II’s death, was direct in announcing that he and the governor-general would be heading to London, ‘where we will meet the king’.

Leave a comment
Robert Phiddian

Robert Phiddian teaches literature at Flinders University and is specially interested in political satire, parody, and humour. He researches political satire, including current Australian political cartoons, with Haydon Manning. He is Chair of the Adelaide Festival of Ideas, and has a particular interest in the quality of public language and in writers’ festivals. He is also Director of the Australasian Consortium of Humanities Research Centres.

From the New Issue

You May Also Like

Leave a comment

If you are an ABR subscriber, you will need to sign in to post a comment.

If you have forgotten your sign in details, or if you receive an error message when trying to submit your comment, please email your comment (and the name of the article to which it relates) to ABR Comments. We will review your comment and, subject to approval, we will post it under your name.

Please note that all comments must be approved by ABR and comply with our Terms & Conditions.