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Victorian women artists' glass ceiling
Mary Moser and the Italian artist Angelica Kauffman were among the 36 founder members of the Royal Academy of Arts in 1768. Yet when Johann Zoffany was asked to paint The Academicians of the Royal...
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Best We Forget: WW1 for White Australia
Best We Forget: War for White Australia, 1914–18 was the title chosen by author Peter Cochrane. "Lest we forget" was a phrase commonly used in WW1 memorial services in British countries. “Best we...
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President FD Roosevelt's museum-library
Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882-1945) was born in Hyde Park N.Y, son of James and Sara Delano Roosevelt. He attended Groton Preparatory School Mass, and received a BA from Harvard. Then he next studied...
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Alice Waten star violin teacher-performer
Judah Waten (1911-85), born in Odessa, was a famous author and leftist political activist in Melbourne. His mother Nechama was concerned to give all her children a musical education. Odessa was a...
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Great Ocean Rd - tourist pleasures
Before the Great Ocean Rd was built in Victoria, travel between the coastal settlements along Southern Victoria was rugged. In the 1870s, a trip from Lorne to Geelong was arduous via a rough coach...
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Timișoara Romania: Europe Culture capital
Serbian Orthodox Church and Union Squareunique facade, small towers, beautiful bells and icons.Built in C18th in the Baroque style.Timisoara is in Western Romania, near the borders with Hungary and...
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Jacques Rogge: surgeon sportstar linguist
Belgium-born Jacques Rogge (1942-2021) was educated at the Jesuit Sint-Barbara College in Ghent and the University of Ghent. I imagine that because his grandfather (cycling) and father...
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Polish musician Szpilman/Adrien Brody in The Pianist
Władysław Szpilman (1911-2000) was born in Sosnowiec Poland into a cultured family. He showed an early talent for the piano, training in Warsaw, then in the 1920s continuing in Berlin. In the most...
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Corfu: Venetian, British, Greek, Jewish.
Corfu Island sat in the eastern Mediterranean, off the western coast of Greece, Albania and near South Italy, occupying a militarily and economically strategic point. Corfu was therefore conquered...
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Mark Rothko's unusual chapel, Houston Tx.
Mark RothkoMark Rothkowitz Rothko (1903–70) was raised in an Orthodox Jewish family in Dvinsk Latvia, rejecting Jewish observance as a teenager only once they were in the US. Yet his life in New...
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Historic, cultured, beautiful Old Krakow.
In 1960 my first year in high school, there were 120 students - a few from Russian, German or Romanian parents and 114 from Polish parents. They all wanted to re-visit Poland by 1970, especially to see...
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Lionel Logue saved King George VI. Who??
Lionel Logue (1880-1953) was born in College Town Adelaide, eldest of 4 children of South Australian parents clerk George Logue and his wife Lavinia. Logue attended Prince Alfred College in 1889-96,...
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Ship University: learning, US power1926
As a graduate, James Lough had wanted to link experience with education. Later Lough became Prof of Experimental Psychology at NYU (1901-27), when he wanted to create a new kind of education that...
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Bobby Fischer: genius needing psychiatric help
As I wrote in an earlier post, American Bobby Fischer (1943–2008) played world championship matches in 1970–1 when he won 20 consecutive games before losing once and drawing 3 times to ex-world...
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Mercy Ships, lifesaving surgery in Africa
Don Stephens founded Mercy Ships in 1978, as a Christian charity headquartered in Texas, with the purchase of the SS Anastasis. During his time as President of Mercy Ships, Don directed and led...
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Medieval sexual abuse & clerical crimes
From the late 1980s, allegations of sexual abuse of children associated with Catholic institutionsand clerics in several countries started to be the subject of formal investigations. In Ireland, in...
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Feodor Ruckert Faberge silver, cloisonné enamel
Ruckert, coloured tea service, 1887-96, AlamyEarly medieval Russian silver often included calm niello work and ornamental lines with black enamel. But under Tsar Peter the Great (1682-1725), who...
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Peter Ustinov great family, acting, writing.
Peter Ustinov's great-grandfather Moritz Hall was Jewish refugee from Kraków and later a Christian colleague of German missionaries in Ethiopia. Peter’s paternal grand-father was a Russian...
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Waddesdon Manor: fine Rothschild art
Waddesdon was a typical village in Aylesbury Buckinghamshire. The medieval church in its centre reminds the town of its history that dates back to the times before the Norman conquest in 1066....
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great Victorian food market - Leadenhall
If locals and tourists had to select the four most famous markets of London, they would probably be Leadenhall, Billingsgate, Smithfield & Spitalfields. In particular, people know the market at...
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Medieval travellers were quite like us
Our perception of medieval Europe is of a confined world in which people rarely travelled beyond their own locality, and when they did it was for religious reasons. But Paul Oldfield asked us to...
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Churchmen sparked Lisbon's pogrom in 1506
Jews had inhabited Iberia for centuries. By the 1400s, Old Jews were thriving in Portugal’s best trading, commercial and intellectual centres. It was only when Spain’s Queen Isabella & King...
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Masterpieces Musée d’Orsay, Paris
In 1900 the Exposition Universelle drew thousands of art lovers to Paris, many arriving by train at the new Gare d’Orsay. Opened in 1986 and located on the Left Bank of the River Seine opposite the...
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tragic early death of Prince Albert
Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha (1819-61) came from a small German state whose ruling family married into many European royals; in 1840 he married Victoria, his first cousin. The Queen came to...
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Saving Jewish orphans Ochberg 1921
I was fascinated by Isaac Ochberg(1879–1938) who was born in Uman in Russia/now Ukraine. With thousands of other Russians, the Ochbergs went to South Africa in 1894 where Isaac became a successful Cape...
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