David Marr

This is Late Night Live.

I'm David Marr, and I'm speaking to Isabel Allende, the writer.

Isabel, you have confessed so many of your trade secrets in this book, how to write, how to go about it.

And one of the most beautiful images for me in the book is your description of how characters become alive to you, that they stand around in the dark and you've only got a candle in your hand.

On ABC Radio National, this is Late Night Live.

I'm David Marr, and I'm talking to George Browning and Louise Adler about the impact of the last years of war in the Middle East on Australia, its society and its politics.

Louise, one thing that does need to be acknowledged, doesn't it, that Australia has become, according to the polls... really quite remarkably hostile to Israel.

The very fine Pew polling outfit earlier this year, I think they were doing their polling in Australia in March and April, found that only 19% of Australians had a very favourable view of Israel.

I think that really... prompted a sort of a wealth of research precisely into that.

And I think now, you know, the work of many historians like Raymond Evans and even journalists like David Marr, the sort of work that they've produced around violence on the frontier shows that that is now unequivocal.

So the question remains, why is history still contested? And I think that comes back to the idea of the nation and the national story and the importance of history in providing a kind of a national narrative and an identity.

And that's why it's contested, because people contest what it means to be Australian.

On ABC Radio National, this is Late Night Live.

I'm David Marr, and I'm talking to Bartosz Brzesinski, a senior reporter at Politico, about the constitutional crisis that is underway right now in Poland.

Bartosz, the machinery here, just let's look at the machinery just briefly.

I don't want to get down into all of the bits and pieces as much as I'd love to as a lawyer.

On ABC Radio National, this is Late Night Live.

I'm David Marr, and I'm speaking, of course, to Ian Dunt.

Ian Dunt.

Enough about America.

On ABC Radio National, this is Late Night Live.

I'm David Marr.

I'm talking to Iris Mackler about the wash-up from the Israeli elections and the state of play there at the moment.

Is it somehow deeply symbolic of the situation of Israel today that...