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March Of The Living & Nazi death camps: guide dogs for the blind
The March of the Living is an annual educational programme for students who come from around the world to Poland, where they explore what remains of Jewish history and the Holocaust. The study period...
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A royal marrying a divorced person??? Surely not!
Captain Peter Townsend (1914 – 1995) was a successful Battle of Britain fighter pilot but in 1941, he was shot down in a dog fight and wounded. Also in 1941 he married Rosemary Pawle and had two...
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A magnificent luxury liner torpedoed: Lusitania 1915
The Cunard liner Lusitania must have been a beautiful ship, mostly for the 563 first class passengers and the 464 second class passengers. Not for the 1,138 passengers in steerage who were squished...
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WW1 Patriotism and Art in Melbourne
An exhibition exploring war is on at The Ian Potter Centre, NGV in Melbourne. Follow the Flag: Australian Artists and War 1914-45 brings together 150+ works of war art created by Australians. The...
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Jewish hero or Nazi pawn in Holland - Gertrude van Tijn
I have read Anna Frank’s diary and have visited the Frank home in Amsterdam. In fact I have read every story that has been printed in English of Dutch Jewish survivors from the Holocaust. But these...
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Hendrick Avercamp 1615: his original winter paintings... and modern copies
Hendrick Avercamp (1585–1634) was born in Amsterdam, and trained there, probably with Pieter Isaacsz. This deaf artist, known as The Mute of Kampen, was a man who specialised in painting winter scenes....
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How did the kilt become the Scotsman’s national dress?
Normally I read a book first and then the reviews after. But this time a review (“Scotching the Myth” by Mary Miers in Country Life, 6th August 2014) encouraged me to read the book. The detailed...
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gorgeous Anglo Saxon gold & silver art, discovered in 2009
Although my knowledge of history doesn’t go back beyond the 17th century, this story was fascinating because I am besotted with gold and silver art.And another thing. The History Blog noted that while...
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Baron Cosmo Duff Gordon's finest moments...and the not so fine ones
Sir Cosmo Duff Gordon (1862–1931), 5th Baronet of Halkin was born into a prominent Scottish land owning family. But where did the title come from?Let us go back into history. Dear great-uncle James...
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In honour of my late father: Women's Land Army: WW2
My father graduated from university in Dec 1943 and became a Lieutenant and an engineer in the Australian Army in 1944 and 1945. When he passed away this week, I wanted to honour him with material that...
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An Anglican church in Istanbul to memorialise the Crimean War
The Crimean War (1853-6) was a very strange war, fought between the Russians on one side and the British, French and Ottoman Turks on the other. The motivation for each of the belligerents was both...
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British boys growing up in an Australian bush orphanage
After WW1 the British government started taking a proactive approach to their social problems. Prominent clerics supported the idea of removing street kids out to the colonies – the colonies would...
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Whose freedom is more valuable - a loved Israeli prime minister or his murderer?
Yitzhak Rabin (1922–1995) eventually became an Israeli politician and elder statesman. But even from his humble beginnings, Rabin’s family path exactly followed my own family’s and that may be why my...
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France or Britain - where was photography invented?
Many thanks to “Introduction to Photography”, published by Niilm University, in Kaithal in the Indian state of Haryana.William Henry Fox Talbot (1800-77) studied the classics and mathematics at...
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Rabbit Hole: a film about grief
I saw the film Rabbit Hole (directed by John Cameron Mitchel in 2010) while my parents were both alive, alert and very active members of their family and community. Now my parents both died this year,...
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The Scopes Trial of 1925 - science Vs the Bible
My total knowledge of the Scopes Trial of July 1925 comes from the film Inherit the Wind (1960) starring Spencer Tracy. It was not until later in the 1960s that the Scopes Trial began to be mentioned...
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Sonia Delaunay in Paris: art, colours and shapes
Sonia Terk (1885-1979) was born north of Odessa in Southern Russia in 1885. But then she moved to St Petersburg; there she was cared for by her mother's brother, the lawyer Henri Terk, for the years of...
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Music from beyond the grave - Tigersapp
It was on radio that I heard a very strange story. A homemade CD with four song titles had arrived at EMI Music Company and was simply labelled “Szymon”. There was no other information, no accompanying...
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World Fairs come to Melbourne - 1870, 1880 and 1888!
John Twycross (born in Hampshire UK in 1819) did not move to Australia until after gold had been discovered in central Victoria in 1851. John and two of his siblings arrived in Dec 1853 but found...
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Peter Levi - Jewish son, Jesuit priest or married Oxford scholar?
The students were analysing Gustav Mahler's (1860–1911) and Arnold Schoenberg’s (1874–1951) decisions to convert from Judaism to Christianity (Catholicism and Lutheranism respectively). I set them the...
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