Richard Johnstone

Richard Johnstone reviews ‘The Cook’s Companion (2nd ed)’ by Stephanie Alexander and ‘Plenty: Digressions on food’ by Gay Bilson

December 2004–January 2005, no. 267 • 01 December 2004

Gay Bilson, in her Plenty: Digressions on Food, is good on garnish. She describes the occasion of the queen mother’s tour of this country in 1958, during which the royal visitor ‘was offered white-bread sandwiches in the shape of Australia, with a sprig of parsley at the south-eastern tip, thoughtfully representing Tasmania’. Bilson understands, wisely, that the anecdote speaks for itself, a ... (read more)

La Trobe University Essay | ‘Spasms of Assertion: The Politics and Aesthetics of Blogging’ by Richard Johnstone

May 2005, no. 271 • 01 May 2005

Nowadays, we want the truth. Suddenly, it seems, we are no longer content to be sceptical and laconic and sophisticated, or to take the line that there are many kinds of truth and that it all depends on how you look at it, and on who is doing the looking. Politicians and journalists, for example, long assumed by a knowing public to belong to professions that not only display but positively require ... (read more)

Richard Johnstone reviews ‘Aussiewood: Australia’s leading actors and directors tell how they conquered Hollywood’ by Michaela Boland and Michael Bodey and ‘Trade Secrets: Australian actors and their craft’ by Terence Crawford

September 2005, no. 274 • 01 September 2005

Judi Farr – one of the fourteen interviewees who appear in Terence Crawford’s Trade Secrets: Australian Actors and Their Craft – reflects on the unpredictable nature of performance, and on the way in which an actor can become so immersed in a role and so apparently truthful to the emotion of the moment that, contrary to what we might expect, the connection with the audience is broken rather ... (read more)

Richard Johnstone reviews ‘The Cinema of Britain and Ireland’ edited by Brian McFarlane

November 2005, no. 276 • 01 November 2005

Robert Murphy, in his contribution to this collection of essays on The Cinema of Britain and Ireland, focuses on a little-seen example of the ‘British noir tradition’, Robert Hamer’s The Long Memory (1952). Murphy makes a convincing case for The Long Memory, placing it in the frame with other, better-known contributions to the genre such as John Boulting’s Brighton Rock (1947), Hamer’s o ... (read more)

Richard Johnstone ‘Noeline: Longterm memoir’ by Noeline Brown and ‘Much Love, Jac X’ by Jacki Weaver

February 2006, no. 278 • 01 February 2006

In 1961 a young Noeline Brown was playing in Terence Rattigan’s The Sleeping Prince (1954) at the Pocket Playhouse in Sydenham – ‘just across the Princes Highway from Tempe Tip’, as she characteristically locates it – when Vivien Leigh, on tour with the Old Vic, came to see a specially arranged Sunday evening performance. From the moment she emerged from the chauffeured limousine, Leigh ... (read more)

Richard Johnstone reviews 'The Sparrow Garden' by Peter Skrzynecki

May 2004, no. 261 • 01 May 2004

In ‘St Patrick’s College’ a poem that appears in his 1975 collection Immigrant Chronicle, Peter Skrzynecki recalls the last day of school, when ‘mass was offered up for our departing intentions’, after which the young Peter makes his way home, ‘taking the right-hand turn out of Edgar Street for good’. It is characteristic of Skrzynecki that he should locate such a crucial turning poi ... (read more)

Richard Johnstone reviews 'A Story Dreamt Long Ago: A memoir' by Phyllis McDuff and 'The Boy in the Boat: A memoir' by Brian O’Raleigh

March 2004, no. 259 • 25 October 2022

We expect memoirs to be true – it is one of the main reasons we read them – but we have also grown accustomed over the years to the idea that, while the memoir may be true in spirit, events may not have happened exactly as described. Indeed, it is not unusual for the memoirist to include some prefatory remarks to that effect. Such caveats seem fair; we have come to see them as no more than ack ... (read more)