If we’re going to grasp what makes Eakins’ art so tragically powerful, we should be honest about the man who made them – and the impulses that drove him.
During her lifetime, Zelda Fitzgerald’s creativity and contribution to her husband’s work were woefully undervalued. Two new films will tell her story.
Just 210 of nearly 13,000 biographical entries in the Australian Dictionary of Biography are Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander men and women. A new project aims to change this.
Over 40 years, author Helen Garner has delighted, infuriated, confused and charmed readers. A new account of her writing life is informative but avoids delving into the trickier aspects of her work.
Judith Wright was possibly our greatest poet and a passionate social activist. But a new biography suggests that in writing her family memoirs, Wright avoided evidence that her settler forebears likely participated in the murder of Aborigines.
The president of the Thomas Wolfe Society explains why Law had his work cut out for him when he agreed to portray a man who was “a hydroelectric plant of emotion.”
When biographer Gretchen Gerzina came across an old British newspaper article calling Sarah E. Farro “the first negro novelist,” she wondered: who was Farro, and why had she been lost to history?
After Jonathan Bate, in his recent biography of Ted Hughes, wrote about Hughes’ salacious sex life, a number of critics – including Janet Malcolm – were quick to pounce.
Srinivasa Ramanujan was one of the most brilliant mathematicians of the 20th century. His story is told in the movie The Man Who Knew Infinity, screening tonight in selected cinemas in Australia.
Italy’s most notorious politician has been treated as a laughing stock for years – but a new book about his life and career makes the truth all too clear.
At the opening night of her private view and book launch, poet and artist Frieda Hughes appeared at the door of the Belgravia Gallery in Mayfair, a small but striking figure in a pillarbox-red suit. In…
The Australian Dictionary of Biography (ADB) is Australia’s largest and longest-running social sciences and humanities project. Set up in 1957, it has been publishing short accounts of significant and…
Why would anyone want to be prime minister? Why indeed? It is a job that will almost certainly end in failure. Only one prime minister in the last 100 years has left office at the time of his own choosing…
Adam Cullen, Australian artist and winner of the 2000 Archibald Prize, died just over two years ago at the age of 46. He spent the last three years of his life working with a young writer, Erik Jensen…
Managing Director, Triple Helix Consulting; Chief Executive Officer, Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research; Professorial Fellow, ANU Fenner School for the Environment and Society, Australian National University