Category: Books
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Children on the breadline
British children on the breadline Here’s the reality of today’s Britain: 2.2m children are living in households on the brink of extreme poverty, and four out of five teachers see children arriving at school hungry. The figures emerge this week from The Guardian’s “Breadline Britain” project, an investigation into the human impact of the…
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Keep calm and carry on
AT school in Townsville just after World War Two we used to sing “There’ll always be an England” at the top of our tiny voices. The robust patriotic song, written in 1939, looks a little shakey in 2012. In Britain today most people accept that the country is on its knees but citizens – at…
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When books make you cry
I went to the British Library’s current exhibition anticipating that it would be interesting. What I didn’t expect was that it would move me to tears. Writing Britain is a history of landscape presented through works of literature, from the original manuscript of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales to Dickens and Woolf. It reunited me with some…
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Changing times
I first arrived in London 45 years ago on the P&O passenger liner Oronsay. It was a six-week trip that cost me 200 bucks. I spent my first night in the Mount Pleasant Hotel, a two-star lodging previously used as a hostel for drunks and down-and-outs. This time I arrived on Royal Thai Airways (Brisbane-Bangkok)…
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The changing face of London
John Lanchester’s novel Capital, which I began reading in the plane on the way over, is great preparation for a visit here. In it he takes the inhabitants of a gentrified London street – everyone from the financial trader to the family in the corner shop – through the GFC. It’s a funny, touching, hugely…
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Join the journey
ONE of my literary heroes, Robert Louis Stevenson (Kidnapped and Treasure Island), once said: “For my part, I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel’s sake. The great affair is to move.” In the past I shared the great man’s view, but not now. Travel for “travel’s sake” is tourism and, to…
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And we’re off
We’re embarking on the next phase of the great adventure – this time in Europe. Over the next few weeks we’ll be bringing you our reports and thoughts on developments there. In the months since Come the Revolution was launched in Australia Alex has spoken to hundreds of people in bookshops from Brisbane to Bowral,…