R.J. Stove

Latest by R.J. Stove in Chronicles

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  August 2015

  The Worst Verse Since 1915

  Exactly 50 years ago, T.S. Eliot died. Exactly 100 years ago, “Prufrock” appeared. What better moment, then, to perform the long-overdue public service of identifying the single worst poem to have been published during the last century?

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• Reviews

  February 2011

  European Union

  Sometimes short books on great musicians markedly surpass longer ones. Aspects of Wagner, by British philosopher and ex-parliamentarian Bryan Magee, provides a much better guide in its 112 pages to the Master of Bayreuth than do most other Wagner-related books of seven times the size.

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• Cultural Revolutions

  September 2010

  Aussie Election

  Miss Julia Gillard (one takes particular pleasure in applying the honorific “Miss” to so stentorian and charmless a femocrat), the prime minister of Australia, faces an interesting challenge in her bid for reelection on August 21.

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• Correspondence

  August 2010

  How Aussies Lost Their Pride of Erin

  Some recent Australian cultural trends—massive Islamic immigration, for instance—are so obvious that even an economist can detect them. Others occur so stealthily that they attract no attention, until you suddenly look around and think, Hey, whatever happened to such-and-such?

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• Correspondence

  June 2010

  In Darkest London, Part 2

  This is the second part of a two-part article written by a white male Catholic convert, 48 years old, who has no specialist theological training whatsoever, is of strictly average intelligence, and represents no interest group or political movement.

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• Correspondence

  May 2010

  In Darkest London, Part I

  When you reach Heathrow, the four things that hit you in the face are the ear-splitting noise, the confusion, the burqas, and the prevailing smell of vomit. Chicago’s O’Hare is said to be the busiest and most confusing airport in the world, but O’Hare is a dream to navigate compared with Heathrow.

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• Correspondence

  January 2009

  Love it or Leave It?

  Never has America appeared more incomprehensible in other lands than she has in the last month. We who are routinely published in America, who read for preference American books and magazines, who live and sleep and breathe and indeed dream America, who above all treasure our American friendships, are as baffled by what to expect as if we were contemplating Nagorno-Karabakh.

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• Correspondence

  February 2008

  Two Cheers for Howard

  Drawing up a balance sheet for assessing Mr. Howard’s reign (the longest of any Australian leader save for Sir Robert Menzies) is difficult, purely because its highlights bear no discernible relation to the rest of his actions and give the impression of having been brought about by a different person.

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• Correspondence

  September 2005

  Bland Rube Triumphant

  Let us now praise famous Queenslanders, in particular the most famous Queenslander of the lot: Sir Johannes Bjelke-Petersen, who died, aged 94, on April 26.

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• Correspondence

  June 2004

  A Tale of Two Queenslanders

  Peter Hollingworth was born in 1935. After completing his national service, he joined the Anglican ministry, serving both at the parish level and in philanthropic roles. He spent a quarter of a century helping to run a leading Australian charity, Melbourne’s Brotherhood of Saint Laurence.

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• Correspondence

  March 2003

  Take My Guns, Please

  Worried about your civil liberties? Concerned that the Potomac sniper’s terror, though now concluded, will lead to the shredding of the Second Amendment?

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• Correspondence

  May 2001

  Charlie Is Their Darling

  On October 25, 2000, central Sydney's traffic stood still for hours, for the first time since the Olympiad.

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• Correspondence

  February 1999

  Australia's Pat Buchanan: Out, But Not Down

  If 1998 is remembered in Australian political history for nothing else—a probable assumption, given the administrative gridlock which otherwise prevailed—it will go down in the annals for two events: Prime Minister John Howard's upset reelection on October 3; and, of longer-term significance, Pauline Hanson's failure to retain her parliamentary seat.

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• View

  July 1997

  The Iron Lady Down Under

  She is the most powerful, the most revered, and the most reviled woman in Australia today. Before February 1996, almost no one even in her home state of Queensland had heard of her.

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• Correspondence

  September 1996

  Geoffrey Blainey and the Multicultural Nirvana

  Amid such spectacles, we could do much worse than ponder a weighty and yet unassertive sentence that Blainey published eight years ago: "Democracy is a freak condition in the world's history: civil liberties are not common liberties even today, and most people in the world have never possessed them."

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• Correspondence

  July 1994

  Australians All, Let Ostriches

  "Australians all, let ostriches, / For we are young and free"—the attempt by an expensively educated Australian schoolchild to notate the first two lines of Australia's national anthem (the first line of which is "Australians all, let us rejoice").

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