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Dec 30, 2024 | 
australianbookreview.com.au | Joshua Black
It is dreadful to lose one’s voice. Most of us can mime our way through an episode of laryngitis or the anaesthetised numbness that follows dental surgery, confident that normalcy will return. But imagine knowing that normalcy was gone for good. As Flora Willson recently put it, there is an ‘intimate connection between voice and identity’. We are the sounds we make.
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Dec 4, 2024 | 
insidestory.org.au | Joshua Black |Frank Bongiorno
Before he resigned from the House of Commons in 2023, Boris Johnson updated his register of parliamentary interests to reveal that he had received an advance of £510,000 (a shade over A$1 million) for a memoir to be published by HarperCollins. Now released with the bold title Unleashed, the book appears not to be performing as well as intended in retail terms. But it has done one thing: it has assured its author a new round of publicity, to which he has taken keenly.
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Feb 14, 2024 | 
australianbookreview.com.au | Joshua Black |Arts Highlights
Each episode of Nemesis, the ABC’s morbidly fascinating three-part retrospective series on the Abbott-Turnbull-Morrison governments of 2013-22, begins with a word association game. The ensemble of parliamentarians and former ministers is asked to describe the three featured prime ministers in a single word.
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Nov 7, 2023 | 
pioneertheatre.org | Joshua Black
With the thrills and chills of Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express and The Rocky Horror Show behind us, our 2023-2024 Season journey continues into the holiday season. From December 1-16, Pioneer Theatre Company will bring Utah audiences Christmas in Connecticut—a new musical adaptation of the beloved 1945 Warner Brothers Film.
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Aug 30, 2023 | 
australianbookreview.com.au | Joshua Black
Journalist Peter Rees’s biography of Tim Fischer was originally published by Allen & Unwin in 2001 with the title The Boy from Boree Creek. Reviewing the volume in this magazine, fellow journalist Shaun Carney had many kind words for Fischer, but said that the book was ‘either a lesson in the wonders of our democracy or a cautionary tale demonstrating the mediocrity of our public figures’ (ABR, June 2001).
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Aug 27, 2023 | 
australianbookreview.com.au | Joshua Black
Journalist Peter Rees’s biography of Tim Fischer was originally published by Allen & Unwin in 2001 with the title The Boy from Boree Creek. Reviewing the volume in this magazine, fellow journalist Shaun Carney had many kind words for Fischer, but said that the book was ‘either a lesson in the wonders of our democracy or a cautionary tale demonstrating the mediocrity of our public figures’ (ABR, June 2001).
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Jun 28, 2023 | 
dailybulletin.com.au | Joshua Black
On June 26 2013, as she fronted the press gallery in Canberra after her removal as leader of the Labor Party, Julia Gillard was determined not to cry. In her prime ministerial resignation speech, she asked not for pity, but rather for a meaningful national conversation about gender and politics, specifically the politics of her demise. Ten years after the fact, that conversation is ongoing. At times, it has been a progressive and sophisticated one.
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Jun 25, 2023 | 
theconversation.com | Joshua Black
On June 26 2013, as she fronted the press gallery in Canberra after her removal as leader of the Labor Party, Julia Gillard was determined not to cry. In her prime ministerial resignation speech, she asked not for pity, but rather for a meaningful national conversation about gender and politics, specifically the politics of her demise. Ten years after the fact, that conversation is ongoing. At times, it has been a progressive and sophisticated one.
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Jun 5, 2023 | 
australianbookreview.com.au | Joshua Black
John Farnham nearly missed the launch party for his most successful album, Whispering Jack (1986) – he was stuck on a couch in a foetal position. He was under immense pressure. His three-year stint as lead singer of Little River Band (LRB) had left him saddled with some of LRB existing debt. Whispering Jack was clearly his last chance to show the world the kind of artist he thought he could be.
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May 1, 2023 | 
dailybulletin.com.au | Joshua Black
Tue May 2 Written by Joshua Black, PhD Candidate, School of History, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University In a television interview with Phillip Adams in 1999, Paul Keating remarked that he retained much influence on the international stage. This was a calm and contented Keating, barely three years out of office but comfortable in the knowledge his voice continued to be heard in the right quarters.
