Bruce Dawe, who has died in Queensland at the age of 90, was one of Australia’s most popular poets. His reputation was due in part to his prolific output and the inclusion of his poems in high school and university curricula. He published more than 10 books of poetry, and his signature collection, Sometimes Gladness,

After many decades of anti-Catholicism, and the horrendous abuse scandals, a scapegoat emerged

Father Paul Stenhouse MSC, who died in Sydney on November 19 at the age of 83, was the doyen of Australian Catholic editors. His reputation, in Australia and more widely, stemmed in part from the extraordinary length of his editorship of a Catholic monthly, Annals Australasia – a period of 51 years – but more

Father Paul Stenhouse MSC, who died in Sydney on November 19 at the age of 83, was the doyen of Australian Catholic editors. His reputation, in Australia and more widely, stemmed in part from the extraordinary length of his editorship of a Catholic monthly, Annals Australasia – a period of 51 years – but more

The Catholic imagination of Christopher Koch, the Australian novelist most remembered for The Year of Living Dangerously (1978), was shaped by two intense experiences. The first was his childhood immersion in the popular Catholic culture in Australia in the first half of the 20th century. Abounding in hints of supernatural mystery and memory, it showed the power of

When Les Murray received an honorary D Litt degree from the University of New England in 1990, he began his acceptance speech in an unusual way. He said that he only spoke in prose when the occasion would not allow him to speak in verse. He was, as this confession revealed, a natural poet; in

In film history, the priest has been among the most common and enduring characters, and to a large extent has been played by actors of Catholic background. From the 1930s, Catholics were prominent in Hollywood, whether actors such as Spencer Tracy and James Cagney or directors like John Ford and Leo McCarey. Producers turned to

Once they were heroes; now filmmakers depict them as bitter men