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Each year, The Monthly’s December – January bumper double issue offers a treasure trove of long reads and indulgent pleasures to get readers through their summers. Twice the length, it’s well suited to sit dog-eared on the coffee tables of many Australian beach houses while the cricket burbles on the radio, and the smells of sunscreen and insect repellent jostle for supremacy.

To bid farewell to 2024 and usher in 2025, we have a wealth of the surprising, the curious, the revealing and the essential. Kath Kenny takes a dive into the aquatic moments in the life and career of Gough Whitlam, Elle Hardy walks us through the history and troubling present of far-right organisations in Australia, and Anna Goldsworthy shares why we – as individuals and as a society – need classical music in our lives.

This is also the one time of the year The Monthly includes new fiction, and with stories from celebrated authors Tara June Winch and Josephine Rowe, your itch for a transportive short story will be well catered for.

Megan Davis offers her post-mortem on the civility policing of Lidia Thorpe and what it tells us about the national conversation without a Voice to Parliament; Rebecca Huntley visits northern New South Wales to find out about therapeutic trials of MDMA; Quentin Sprague visits summer exhibitions at the Art Gallery of New South Wales and the National Gallery of Australia; and Margaret Simons and Dave Tacon visit former Philippines senator Leila de Lima and talk about democracy, being framed as a drug dealer, and rebuilding her life and political career.
Plus there are books (including the new Helen Garner), television, film, birdwatching, a new edition of Dungeons & Dragons… all the distractions you might be seeking for a long hot summer. Take your time.