Type Monthly journal Owner(s) Quadrant Magazine Ltd. Founded 1956 | Format Magazine Editor Keith Windschuttle Political alignment Conservative | |
Quadrant is an Australian literary and cultural journal. Quadrant reviews literature, as well as featuring essays on ideas and topics such as politics, history, universities, and the arts. It also publishes poetry and short stories.
Contents
History
The magazine was founded in Sydney in 1956 by Richard Krygier, a Polish–Jewish refugee who had been active in social-democrat politics in Europe and James McAuley, a Catholic poet, famous for the anti-modernist Ern Malley hoax. It was an initiative of the Australian Committee for Cultural Freedom, the Australian arm of the Congress for Cultural Freedom, an anti-communist advocacy group funded by the CIA.
It has had many notable contributors including Les Murray, who has been its literary editor since 1990, Peter Ryan, who wrote a column from 1994 to 2015, Heinz Arndt, Sir Garfield Barwick, Frank Brennan, Ian Callinan, Hal Colebatch, Peter Coleman, Sir Zelman Cowen, Anthony Daniels, Joe Dolce, David Flint, Lord Harris of High Cross, Paul Hasluck, Dyson Heydon, Sidney Hook, A. D. Hope, Barry Humphries, Clive James, John Kerr, Michael Kirby, Frank Knopfelmacher, Peter Kocan, Christopher Koch, Andrew Lansdown, John Latham, Douglas Murray, Patrick O'Brien, Sharon Olds, George Pell, Roger Sandall, Roger Scruton, Greg Sheridan, James Spigelman, Sir Ninian Stephen and Tom Switzer, as well as several Labor and Liberal political figures, including Bob Hawke, John Howard, Tony Abbott, Mark Latham and John Wheeldon.
The magazine holds a conservative stance on political and social issues.
In March 2008, the magazine was describing itself as sceptical of "unthinking Leftism, or political correctness, and its 'smelly little orthodoxies'".