IN A MAJESTIC examination of the contemporary Australian ‘mood’, BARRY HILL charts the effect of current public policy trends on the emotions of those Australians who care about the moral stature of the nation in his 2004 Victorian Premier's Award winning Overland lecture. JANE GRANT uncovers the tragic circumstances of the death of Cynthia Nolan, writer and wife of artist Sidney. MICHAEL ACKLAND reveals the politically radical side of genteel Australian novelist Henry Handel Richardson. JOANNE WATSON traces the remarkable story of Brisbane bohemians in postwar Brisbane. Recent debates about frontier conflicts are refracted through the innovative art of FIONA FOLEY, explored by ANNA HAEBICH. JEFF SPARROW launches a satirical broadside against the notion of ‘elites’ advanced so un-selfconsciously by ‘culture warriors’ David Flint (Twilight of the Elites) and Paul Sheehan (The Electronic Whorehouse). Overland co-editor KATHERINE WILSON suggests that Anne Summers is asking the wrong questions about contemporary Australian women (The End of Equality). KAREN PICKERING and BILL THORPE cover developments in the current debate on Australian history between Keith Windschuttle and The World. In some heated correspondence GERARD HENDERSON and ROBERT MANNE are at loggerheads over whistleblower Andrew Wilkie, the Prime Minister and the war against Iraq. Has Les Murray been picked on by Overland’s poetry editor? Read the correspondence and judge. This issue also features DONALD HORNE on cultural renewal and ROWAN CAHILL, who reveals the routine employment of ‘scab’ labour. “Readers will hopefully be left with the sense, still obtainable from the earliest Overlands, that they have been entertained, informed and engaged, in new and unexpected ways, by writers vitally concerned with Australian life,” writes NATHAN HOLLIER.

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