Hal G.P. Colebatch

In 1910, with Prussian militarism apparently the greatest looming threat to the British Empire and Western civilization, G. K. Chesterton published a novel, The Flying Inn, in which he argued the longest-lasting threat was Islam, and its attractiveness to a…

The logic of Pope Francis’s claim that “God is not afraid of new things” calls for some comment, and the crossing of several pons asinori. First, if you are a Christian, it is a statement of the obvious: God, as…

Australia’s worst-ever Prime Minister, Edward Gough Whitlam, died on Monday, aged 98. Whitlam and the Australian Labor Party came to power at the end of 1972, inheriting from the previous Liberal (i.e. conservative) Government a stable, prosperous country which they…

I am half-English, half-Australian. My forebears came over with William the Conqueror from Maine and Anjou in 1066 and sank deep roots in Shropshire, the most English of English counties. My dear wife is English, and it was in England…

I recently came across a photograph of myself, a good many years younger, sitting behind the wheel of a yellow postwar Austin convertible, the mudguard punctured with a line of bullet holes. The car had been lent to me by…

Bill O’Reilly’s idea of a mercenary force to defend what used to be called Christendom has some very old, if not exactly similar, precedents. Many of the Orders of Chivalry — the Knights Templar and the Orders such as the…

The British National Party (BNP) has expelled its dominating personality and former Euro MP, Nick Griffin. Griffin lost his seat when he was driven into bankruptcy following a succession of lawsuits. At the same time, Tories fed up with Prime…

It may be thought that as an Australian I have no right to publish an opinion on American politics, but the whole world has an interest in who leads America. Your hopes and fears are ours. So, as one who…

American and Australian veterans of World War II have rightly honored the heroic doctors of World War II — the Australian surgeon “Weary” Dunlop probably pre-eminent among them — who worked miracles in Japanese prison camps. But a West Australian…

Going through my library recently I came across a small, rather battered blue book: the 1943 edition of The Last Enemy by Richard Hillary, addressed to my mother, then on Army service as a nursing sister, “With love from Dad.”…