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Guy Fawkes and Parliament, 1605
English Catholics had endured religious discrimination since 1570, when the Pope had excommunicated Queen Elizabeth, releasing her subjects from allegiance to her. Even worse for Catholics, the Spanish...
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Jewish Budapest comes to life again
In the late C18th the royal court of Hungary granted the Jews freedom of religion, trading rights against payment of special taxes, and permission to live anywhere in Obuda - privileges granted only...
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Helene Hanff and Frank Doel - a 20 year relationship
In my younger son’s last year at high school, he asked me one night if I could read a novel, review it and submit it for his English class the next morning. The conversation went like this: Me: are you...
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Sir Stamford Raffles
Thomas Stamford Raffles (1781–1826) was born in London. I had imagined that colonial officers were the second or subsequent sons of decently comfortable families who knew they would never inherit their...
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Modern architecture for VERY small homes
These days more young people are marrying later, having their first child later, remaining single or not having children at all. At the same time, more older divorcees and widows are surviving alone...
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The Orphan Trains: USA 1853-1930
This blog has been very involved in analysing programmes dedicated to saving children and young people from orphanages, poverty, chronic unemployment, lack of potential marital partners after WW1 and...
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Shakespeare and Company Bookshop, Paris: 1919-41
Sylvia Beach (1887–1962) was born in the USA. Then in 1901, the family moved to France when her father became a minister of the American Church in Paris and a director in an American educational...
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Rethinking historical "truths" eg Richard III
During 1st or 2nd year as an undergrad history student at Melbourne University, a lecturer put a historical novel in the reading list. I had read many historical novels before and since, but it was not...
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Why did Breaker Morant and Daisy Bates marry????
Margaret Dwyer (1859–1951) was born into an Irish family. Her mother died when Margaret was still a baby, so she was raised by relatives and given a decent education. But it did not seem to be a happy...
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Monet's garden in Giverny - in real life and in art
The Melbourne Winter Masterpiece exhibition called Monet’s Garden: The Musee Marmottan Monet Paris will open for business in May 2013. In light of this upcoming blockbuster, which will attract viewers...
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My Dream Home III: I have fallen in love
In writing My Dream Home I: green, airy, full of treasures three years ago, I acknowledged that the concept of a personal dream home had flitted in and out of my consciousness, but it never had any...
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American taste and money; English art treasures
The British Forbes family originally made its money from trading between North America and China in the C19th. The first Forbes to migrate, Bertie Forbes (1880-1954), left Scotland for the USA in 1904....
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Australia's amazing aerial medical service: 1928
The founder of one of Australia’s most beloved organisations was the Reverend John Flynn (1880–1951), a minister of the Presbyterian Church. In 1912, he established the Australian Inland Mission to...
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Detecting disease in 17th century portraits
Several years ago I heard a conference paper on the signs of disease and illness in famous C17th portraits. Art historians in the audience knew that the painters generally attempted to show their...
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John James Audubon and the Australian connection
The process of printing engravings via copperplate, with its capacity for reproducing fine line and detail, was largely superseded in books by the development of lithography, a cheaper and therefore...
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Amsterdam's golden age of art is renewed
The National Gallery in London was founded in 1824, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York was founded in 1870, the National Gallery in Berlin was opened in 1876 and Vienna’s Kunsthistorische...
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Fabergé treasures in the USA
I have recently read the book Fabergé: Fantasies & Treasures, written by Geza von Habsburg and published by Universe in 1996.Carl Fabergé (1846-1920) was born into a family in St Petersburg that...
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Lowry's ordinary home and amazing gallery
Laurence Lowry (1887–1976) was born in Stretford Lancs. In 1905 the teenager was a student at the Manchester Municipal College of Art, where he studied under the French Impressionist artist Adolphe...
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Manet, portraits and the good life in Paris
Artist Edouard Manet (1832-83) has been well analysed in the last decade. In 2003, Madrid’s Prado focused on the artist's relationship to his art predecessors and in 2011, Paris’ Musee d'Orsay located...
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Canadian soldier-heroes, 1917-8: Alfred Munnings
Alfred Munnings (1878-1959) was born in Mendham Suffolk in 1878, son of a miller. When he finished his apprenticeship, young Alfred painted rural scenes, gypsies and horses which sold well and were...
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