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Old Saigon emerged into beautiful Ho Chi Minh City
I have not been to North or South Vietnam because of what the Australian government did to both Vietnam’s civilian population during the Vietnam War (1962-75) and to our own young men via...
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Spain: Chipiona's religion, gorgeous beaches and fish dinners
Chipiona (pop 18,000) is a Spanish village in the southern province of Cádiz, near the cities of Cádiz, Jerez and not far from Seville. The town had a fortress that had belonged to the Ponce de León...
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Lasseter's Gold: fool's errand or con artistry?
Simon Caterson’s book Hoax Nation: Australian Fakes and Frauds examined different hoaxes planned during the decades of Australian history; he analysed the events, publications and cultural ephemera...
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The Holocaust in Ukraine: a new history
My maternal family came from Ukraine, one half from Berdyansk, Mariupol and Grafskoy, and the other half from Odessa and Simferopol. My parents in law and their siblings came from towns (Chust, Nizhniy...
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Peggy Guggenheim: the true story
Peggy Guggenheim (1898-1979) was an American collector, patron, dealer and later the founder of her own museum. She successfully stayed at the centre of the modern art world in New York, Paris, London...
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Eileen Gray, modern furniture designer: auction prices soar
Irish designer Kathleen Smithin aka Eileen Gray (1878-1976) was born in Co. Wexford. While studying at London’s Slade School of Art, where Gray was one of the first women admitted, she visited the...
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Paul, John, George and Jimmy: the Beatles in 1964
For my Baby Boomer generation, born after our fathers were demobilised in late 1945, the Beatles story was an open book. I personally knew every word of every Beatle song, every harmony, every wife and...
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Ferdinand von Mueller and his many lady botanists
Ferdinand (later Von) Mueller (1825-96) was born in Germany where he trained as a pharmacist. This was a career that required a professional knowledge of botany, and with his botany PhD thesis safely...
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David Garnett - how much sex did one writer need????
I have asked the students to read Bloomsbury's Outsider: A Life of David Garnett, written by Sarah Knights and published by Bloomsbury Reader in May 2015.David Bunny Garnett (1892–1981) was the only...
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Louis Vuitton gallery in Paris: opened in Sept 2015
The building of the Louis Vuitton Foundation, started in 2006, was to be an art museum and cultural centre designed by the architect Frank Gehry. The museum was funded by LVMH (the European...
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oops we hanged the wrong man. Sorry, Colin Ross
I went on a guided walking tour of Melbourne’s China Town and was surprised when the guide pointed out a piece of land that used to be called Gun Alley, off Little Collins St. I have lived in Melbourne...
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Le Corbusier's architectural masterpieces
Swiss citizen Charles-Édouard Jeanneret aka Le Corbusier (1887-1965) needed to broaden his horizons. During the decade before WW1, he travelled to Paris and found work in the office of the modernist...
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Sexist and gross alcoholic behaviour in pubs: The Six O'Clock Swill
During the Victorian and Edwardian eras, most hotels in Australia closed no earlier than 11 pm. Support for making hotel closing times earlier came from the Temperance Movement, which hoped that...
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WW1, Oxford, The Bloomsbury Set and wounded poets
I have written often about the Bloomsbury Group, whether it was about Virginia Woolf’s rural idyll, Vanessa Bell’s art, Roger Fry’s modernist exhibitions or Quentin Bell in the Spanish Civil War. Quite...
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Willard Worden: 100th anniversary of San Francisco's photographic art. Guest...
After 2 years living just outside San Francisco, I am back here! This year, 2015, is exactly 100 years after the grand Panama-Pacific International Exposition took place. San Francisco held the 1915...
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Soldier Settlers in rural Australia after WW1
In the hope that WW1 would eventually end, the Federal Parliamentary War Committee devised a plan to settle demobilised servicemen on the land in late 1915. The Australia states and territories had...
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The witches of Salem Ma were all hanged: 1692
Religious heresy and dissension raged in late C15th Europe. People knew that witches belonged to a Satanic conspiracy, working together in an organised, murderous conspiracy. In fact the licence...
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Immigrants, paintings and identity - Jewish artists in London
In July 1915, in an East End restaurant called Gradel’s, the Russian-Jewish artist Lazar Berson invited other artists to support each other culturally and artistically. They planned literary and...
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Agreements to protect prisoners of war in World War One
The early-middle 19th century was full of war eg1 the Napoleonic Wars (1793–1815) devastated Europe. Eg2 The Anglo-American War of 1812 involved a war against British shipping and repeated American...
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Wartski jewellery shops: from Russia with love
I am totally invested in Swarovski crystals and can recognise them from 100 meters away, with my eyes blindfolded. But I knew little about Wartski other than it was a family company specialising in...
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