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...
View ArticleMedieval 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...
View ArticleFeodor 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...
View ArticlePeter 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...
View ArticleWaddesdon 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....
View Articlegreat 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...
View ArticleMedieval 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...
View ArticleChurchmen 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...
View ArticleMasterpieces 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...
View Articletragic 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...
View ArticleSaving 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...
View ArticleLeonard Cohen: the mystical roots of genius.
Everyone in Australia knows I've always been a Leonard Cohen fan, and last year my best birthday present was the new book Leonard Cohen The Mystical Roots of Genius by Harry Freedman (Bloomsbury). Good...
View ArticleUK's 1st female parliamentarian: Nancy Astor
American Nancy Langhorne (1879-1964) was born in Virginia, daughter of a wealthy railroad entrepreneur. In the 1890s Nancy and her sister Irene were enrolled in a finishing school in New York where...
View Articleyoung Russians & 1917 Revolution
Andy Willimott wrote an excellent journal article on a generation of young Russians who embraced new ideals of socialist living. I have added my own family’s experience in this amazing era.Communist...
View ArticleA great Wool Museum, Geelong.
Sheep arrived in Geelong in 1832, before it was proclaimed a town in 1838. When it was developing as a Victorian port, Australia was still a series of separate colonies which levied customs duties on...
View ArticleTom Keating: the most moral art faker?
This is the strangest Faked Art story I've ever seen. Tom Keating (1917–84) was born into a poor London family. His father worked as a house painter, and barely made enough to feed the household. At...
View ArticleMuseum Opening of 2021: Carnavalet Paris
The Apollo Awards have been celebrated since 1992 with splendid ceremonies. It’s now as important as ever to independently fete outstanding achievements in the museum world. Yet senior museum...
View ArticleFrank Lloyd Wright Chicago church 1905-8.
Frank Lloyd Wright (1867–1959)’s father had been a Universalist preacher. With their emphasis on a loving God, Universalists were early advocates of endling slavery and the first church to ordain...
View ArticleRippon Lea, Victorian estate & gardens
Ripponlea Mansion was built for Frederick Sargood (1834-1903), a man who became rich selling soft-goods on the Victorian goldfields, wife Marian and 9 children. The property designed by Joseph Reed,...
View ArticleRhodes Scholarship - wish I won one.
Established through the Will of Cecil John Rhodes of the diamond company De Beers in 1902, the Rhodes Scholarship was a very progressive project in the new century. 120+ years later, the Rhodes...
View ArticleMelbourne synagogue fire: brutal anti-semitism.
A large blaze engulfed the very religious Adass Israel Synagogue in Ripponlea in Melbourne’s south-east on Friday morning, and is being treated as a deliberately lit fire.The Adass Israel synagogue in...
View ArticleLowestoft soft-paste porcelain: 1756-1801.
Map of Lowestoft in Suffolk,facing Amsterdam across the North Sea.A few years ago I asked my students to select an article on Lowestoft porcelain and they thought Antiques Trade Gazette to be...
View ArticleStefan Weintraub's top German jazz band!
Austrian artist Max Oppenheimer (1885-1954) painted in 1927, capturing the rough energy of a music that was taking Berlin’s nightlife by storm in the interwar era.Max Oppenheimer, Weintraubs...
View ArticleSaving Tasmania's aboriginals: Truganini
Truganini in shell necklace, 1866 - jpgin The AustralianTruganini (1812-76) was born on Bruny Island Tasmania near the mouth of the Derwent River, in her tribal territory. Truganini was a daughter of...
View ArticleBruno Bettelheim: a brilliant psychologist?
Bruno Bettelheim Tantor mediaBruno Bettelheim (1903–90) was born in Vienna, son of a middle-class Jewish lumber merchant. He entered Vienna Uni, but was forced to leave to take over his family...
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