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It has a brave title, John Rickard’s Australia: A cultural history, for that adjective ‘cultural’ raises expectations difficult to meet. ‘Culture’, as Raymond Williams has explained, ‘is one of the two or three most complicated words in the English language.’ After reading the book I cannot help wondering whether the substitution of the word ‘social’ would have made for a more accurate subtitle. For what Rickard has given us is an impressive synopsis of recent research and inherited wisdom about the nature of Australian society. It will be a welcome addition to university and college reading lists on Australian history, but it is not, I believe, at the most fundamental level, ‘a cultural history’.

The question remains – where is St John the Baptist’s head? David Dale and Glenn A. Baker are both formidable travellers and reliable chroniclers. Both claim to have been in close proximity to the detached cranium of this biblical hero, but in different countries: Dale in the north of France, Baker in Damascus.

This publication (BAL) represents the first section of a general bibliography, which the general editors describe as one of the major projects of the Bibliography of Australia Project (BALP) of the National Key Centre for Australian Studies at Monash University. It includes, as a lengthy appendix, Kerry White’s bibliography of Australian Children’s Books 1989–2000 A–E.

The dilemma for confessedly nationalist intellectuals has always been what to do about their strange bed-fellows, the scoundrels who have sought a last refuge under the same patriotic blanket. Generally they have distanced themselves with glib distinctions between good and bad nationalisms, left and right nationalisms, radical and conservative and larrikin and respectable nationalisms. Often, too, they looked back – radicals to the 1890s, conservatives to the Great War – and contrasted an idealised past nationalism with contemporary selfishness. How often does discussion of Australian nationalism not get past the 1890s?

At a time when critics are becoming increasingly interested in Australia’s war literature, Robin Gerster turns to it for an understanding of how national legends are created and perpetuated.

All those years ago when the Literature Board was set up and given a moderate budget, taking over the excellent work of the Commonwealth Literature Fund, many sceptics expressed doubt that our small nation had enough spread of writing talent to warrant what they considered excessive expenditure on books and writers. The record stands for itself and, even if we consider only the established writers who have so far showered us with their works in the 1970s and 1980s, the scheme must be reckoned highly successful. The wonder is, however, that each year new writers spring up with works of high quality as though talent has bred talent or we have established a cultural climate which has allowed the muse ample room to breathe and take flight. Who had heard of Kate Grenville five years ago, Rod Jones or John Sligo three years ago, or Mark Henshaw before April of this year?

If your interest in Australian literature predates its current flavour-of-the-month status, no doubt there exists, somewhere in your dinner-party repertoire, a screechingly funny reminiscence from the long ago, that winds up with some pompous professor of literature, or some arrogant publishing mogul, delivering the punchline, ‘Australian literature? Guffaw guffaw. I didn’t know there was any’.

It is fair to say that graphic novels are now an accepted form of literary endeavour. One could even argue that this happened quite some time ago, with the benchmark publishing event that was Alan Moore’s Watchmen (1986). Comics had long been threatening to make the leap of legitimacy into the publishing mainstream, and Moore’s unashamedly adult opus was the perfect platform for DC comics to market a collection of twelve slim comics as a full-length ‘graphic’ novel. Their gamble has turned out to be prudent, as evinced by Watchmen’s faithful transition to the silver screen this year. With special-effects technology finally able to capture the fantasy world of comics, and with a guaranteed audience, it is little wonder we are witnessing an endless onslaught of Hollywood blockbusters based on successful graphic novels.

When George Lambert returned to Sydney in 1921, he was celebrated as the most successful Australian painter of his time. With his cosmopolitan charm and forceful personality, he was in demand both socially and as a leader in contemporary art circles. For the previous two decades in London, he had exhibited regularly at the Royal Academy and the Chelsea Arts Club, rubbing shoulders with prominent British artists including William Orpen, Augustus John and William Nicholson, whose linear style and subject matter were not dissimilar to his own.