It was Prime Minister Robert Menzies who told President Lyndon B. Johnson bluntly but accurately what the simple requirement happened to be for an effective US ambassador to Australia. The ambassador had to have the …
Articles by: "Stephen Loosley"
There is a saying in Vladimir Putin’s Russia that is profoundly insightful: ‘The less you know, the better you sleep.’ This observation could apply at various times in Russian history, particularly during the period of …
This year marks the 80th anniversary of Australia’s war with France. It is largely forgotten, but the facts are simply these. Vichy France, under the leadership of Marshal Philippe Petain, was collaborationist in nature and …
My late friend Andrew Peacock could spin a good yarn, but one story in particular still holds a peculiar resonance for Australian politics and history. Christmas 1972 saw Peacock in Washington DC. The Australian Coalition …
There is only one hill of any consequence in the city of Volgograd (Stalingrad). It is Mamayev Kurgan, which became a critical point of battle for both the German Wehrmacht and the Soviet Red Army …
The Courier, directed by Dominic Cooke, is a film of the Cold War with the Cuban missile crisis of 1962 as backdrop. The central characters, British salesman Greville Wynne (Benedict Cumberbatch) and GRU (Soviet military …
The fall of the Weimar Republic and the seizure of power by the Nazis in 1933 is usually best told by the creative. After all, Weimar is remembered not only for its economic and political …
This is an excellent book. Peter Edwards is recognised as an outstanding Australian historian, especially in the field of defence and national security. Edwards presided over the Official history of Australia’s involvement in Southeast Asian …
No film about the Vietnam War has ever touched its eerie futility as compellingly as Ted Posts’ classic Go Tell the Spartans (1978), in which the brilliant Burt Lancaster commands an American special forces unit …
Between the diplomatic dance and the infernal destruction of war is to be found the opaque art of espionage. Two recent novels dissect the art of espionage with a knowing eye and a clinical precision. …
Francis Ford Coppola’s 1979 film Apocalypse Now is highly regarded as a cinematic masterpiece but is, of course, much more in its impact and continuing resonance. The film is emblematic of the Vietnam War, with …
The only time I had ever seen La Moneda (‘the Mint’)—the presidential palace in Santiago, Chile—was in a newsreel showing the Hawker Hunter aircraft of the Chilean Air Force bombing that magnificent edifice during the …