Clik here to view.
Castrati: Italian super stars in 18th century opera
At the height of the passion for male sopranos, four or five thousand Italian boys a year were castrated in order to preserve their unbroken voices. Eight was the average age to be castrated in the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Brothers in Arms, WW1 - a book by Louise Wilson
We know what the senior politicians and military men thought about WW1. But what did the ordinary Allied soldier think? Undoubtedly most British, Belgian and French soldiers saw the German threat as...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Jeanne Lanvin - who was France's star couturier in the Inter War era?
Jeanne Lanvin (1867-1946) was born in Brittany. Her career began after her training as a very young apprentice at the House of Talbot, dressmaker and milliner. By 1890, this young woman had moved to...
View ArticleClik here to view.
History of the labrador dog
I have always had a dog, as a child in my parents’ home and then in my own home as the parent of the next generation of children. It was always a big, intelligent, loyal dog that loved the beach – a...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Justin Art House Museum: modern art, private collection in Melbourne
Melbourne architect Charles Justin and wife Leah have been avid collectors of edgy, contemporary art and for the past 40 years they have collected a large body of work which was unveiled at the Glen...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Stanhope Forbes: from Newlyn (in Cornwall) to Geelong (in Australia)
I have lectured on Edwardian art history in the past and knew the artists very well. Before the start of this new academic year, I went to have a look at the Edwardians again and focused on my old...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Famous authors - their lives and awful deaths
Jim Bernhard’s book Final Chapters: How Famous Authors Died started with the view that inevitable as it may be, death was unpredictable for most people. This quality infused death with a suspenseful...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Savonarola! The Taliban were not the only ones who created religious...
Girolamo Savonarola (1452-1498) was born into a noble family in Ferrara, his father being a doctor. Girolamo was educated by another relative who was also a doctor and a man of rigid religious...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Golden age of Dutch art and trade - the impact of Asia
The Dutch East India Company/VOC was the most powerful multinational trade and shipping company in the world during the 1600s. At its peak, the VOC employed more than 40,000 Dutch, other European and...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Cairo Flats - Art Deco bachelor flats in 1930s Melbourne
According to Assemble Papers, Cairo Flats Fitzroy was an Art Deco horseshoe building of brick and reinforced concrete that faced onto the Carlton Gardens. The 20 studios and 8 one-bedroom apartments...
View ArticleClik here to view.
London's newest old eatery: The Ivy
Most readers of this blog know I love travelling every winter (July); I spend the time exploring and photographing churches, synagogues, concert halls, art galleries and other cultural edifices. I...
View ArticleClik here to view.
I love Fauvist art!
Even before anyone had heard the name, “Fauvism” seemed to be inspired by the French post-Impressionists of the late 1890s: Paul Gauguin, Paul Cézanne and Vincent van Gogh. These three artists loved...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Remember British and Australian pantomimes?
The Golden Age of Pantomime: Slapstick, Spectacle and Subversion in Victorian England was written by Jeffrey Richards (Tauris publishers, 2014). For British history, I have relied on Simon Callow...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Damascan glass in a British stately home: Luck of Edenhall
Damascus gave the world enamelled and gilded glass which became a specialty of that Silk Road city in the late 13th century and well into the 14th century.The Metropolitan Museum of Art has wonderful...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Exiles and Emigrants to Australia
I visited the Immigration Museum in Melbourne and loved it. About migrating to Australia, Museum Victoria wrote: “Hygiene was poor at the best of times and worse in bad weather. Batten-down the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Maisky Diaries: Soviet ambassador extraordinaire
The Maisky Diaries: Red Ambassador to the Court of St James' 1932-1943 was edited by Gabriel Gorodetsky (Yale UP 2015). The book's material comes from the three large diary volumes written in Russian,...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Hay on Wye, book and festival heaven
The town of Hay-on-Wye lies on the border between England and Wales, tucked into Brecon Beacons National Park and the River Wye. Most of the town is in Wales but the eastern part of town spills over...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Melbourne's decade of Bohemian art at Heide
This is a period of art history in Australia that I have written many individual posts about. In this post I have cited The Roaring 40s written by Fiona Gruber in The Australian 9/4/2016 and will...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Robert Capa - Hungarian-American-world citizen photojournalist
Endre Friedmann (1913–1954) was born in Budapest to a cultivated Jewish family. Educated in his own country, Friedmann spoke flawless Hungarian and German, less flawless French and imperfect, heavily...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The world's most liveable cities
The Global Liveability Survey is a measure of urban quality of life, published annually by the Economist Intelligence Unit/EIU. The EIU is a British multinational media company based in London, best...
View Article