Category: Newsletter

The Last Painting of Sara de Vos by Dominic Smith, Australia, 2016

The Last Painting of Sara de Vos by Dominic Smith, Australia, 2016

Beautifully written, this book about a painting and a forgery is definitely worth reading. It moves seamlessly between three time periods: the seventeenth century, the late 1950s, and the present time, creating and retaining the suspense that holds the story together. While sketching the life of the fictional Dutch artist Sara de Vos and describing …

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Diane’s Newsletter 18th June 2019

Diane’s Newsletter 18th June 2019

In the beginning we feared everything – animals, the weather, the trees, the night sky – everything except each other. Now we fear each other and almost nothing else.
Gregory David Roberts

Diane’s Newsletter 21st May 2019

Diane’s Newsletter 21st May 2019

“Patriarchy teaches us that emotions are untrustworthy. One of the reasons we’re in a global situation of violence and anger, violence largely driven by men, is because men have not been given the tools to be honest about their own emotional lives.”
Brittney Cooper

Diane’s Newsletter 16th April 2019

Diane’s Newsletter 16th April 2019

‘What could be put up against the noise of time? Only that music which is inside ourselves – the music of our being – which is transformed by some into real music. Which, over decades, if it is strong and true and pure enough to drown out the noise of time, is transformed into the whisper of history.’ Julian Barnes, The Noise of Time

Diane’s Newsletter 20th November 2018

Diane’s Newsletter 20th November 2018

… if you knock down an argument that threatens privilege and power, you always face the prospect of the argument being refined and returning to vex you. But if you utterly destroy the person who is bold or foolish enough to open their mouths and question you in the first place, you dramatically reduce the chances of anything like that happening again.
John Birmingham

Diane’s Newsletter 18th September 2018

Diane’s Newsletter 18th September 2018

“Politicians were subject to the whims of party leaders, contributors, pressure groups, and the media. As modern ‘celebrities’ they suffered all the moral and philosophical distortions of that class, too often taken with their own inflated personae on radio and television.” Martin Gross