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Acland St StKilda - Melbourne's best cake and coffee street? the world's best?
I have happily read the book Acland Street: The Grand Lady of St Kilda, written by Dr Judith Buckrich (Nov 2017). It explores the history of architecture on Acland St, starting from the 1850s and...
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Muriel Matters: Australian-British women's rights heroine
The women’s suffrage movement in Britain had been fractured in 1903. This was when Emmeline Pankhurst led a breakaway group from the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies, arguing that it had...
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Acre/Akko - an architectural historian's dream city .............. Guest Blog
Some historyAcre/Akko was conquered by Pharaoh Ramses II (1279-1213 BC), then by the Greeks, the Persians and the Syrian Seleucids. Herod the Great and Roman Emperor Vespasian (69-79 AD) used Akko and...
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The true story of Pocahontas - in Virginia and in England
English King James I granted a charter to the Virginia Co. to form a North America settlement in 1606. The Virginia Co. was to search for local riches and a sea trade route to the Pacific Ocean. 100...
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Krakow Salt Works Museum, under- and over-ground
Since first writing about art stolen by the Nazis during WW2 and hidden in various underground salt mines in Germany and Austria, I have read everything I could on The Monument Men. When the Nazis...
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King Charles II: Art and Power at the Queen’s Gallery
After over a decade of austere Cromwellian rule, the restoration of the monarchy in 1660 led to a resurgence of the arts in England. The court of King Charles II ((1630-85) became the centre for the...
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Gibraltar: Islamic, Spanish, British and modern
The Rock of Gibraltar is a narrow sandy isthmus off the Iberian Peninsula. Being limestone, the 6sq km Rock is riddled with 140+ caves. Off the eastern cliffs of the rock a flat, sandy plain...
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Lady Lucan died recently, but where is Lord John Lucan???
John Bingham, 7th Earl of Lucan (1934 - ?) was the older son of George Bingham, 6th Earl of Lucan, an Anglo-Irish peer. John’s mother went into full time care when he was a toddler and he was raised by...
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Petra - a Nabatean, Roman and Byzantine sandstone city in Jordan
The Nabataean Kingdom once stretched from Damascus and included parts of the Sinai. Located amid rugged desert canyons and mountains in what is now the SW corner of Jordan, Petra was once a...
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London Silver Vaults: my favourite site for silver art in the entire world
The date and maker’s-name symbols were required marks to add to silver objects in Britain from the late C15th on. Each piece, as it was presented for assay/content analysis, was therefore fully...
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Burke and Hare: Edinburgh's grave snatchers or murderers?
The Judgement of Death Act 1823 saw the number of crimes punishable by death in Britain drop. And since medical and anatomical schools were only legally allowed to dissect the cadavers of those who...
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Canada's most special provinces - the Maritimes
I had been to family reunions in Canada, from Toronto to Vancouver, and especially in Winnipeg. Only in 1994 did we made the first trip to the easternmost Maritimes.Susan Skelly (The Australian, 11th...
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Prince Edward's World War 1 experiences and his pro-Fascist views
To understand why Edward the Prince of Wales (1894-1972) turned towards Fascism before WW2 and turned away his parents’ moral values, I will be citing the writing of Dr Heather Jones. Her journal...
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Charles Dodgson and Alice (Lidell) in Wonderland
Charles Dodgson (Lewis Carroll 1832-98) was born in a NW English village, third child of Rev Charles Dodgson. As the family grew to include 11 children, Charles told stories to his siblings, made...
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Porto in Portugal - one of the loveliest cities in Western Europe
A settlement called Portus Cale was founded on the north bank of the Duoro River in the C4th BC. But nothing much was known before Porto was recovered in 868 AD from the Moorish empire.Sao Bento...
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Gun control in Australia and the USA
Two proposals have convinced the world that the USA is going mad vis a vis gun massacres.The BBC reported that President Trump endorses hidden guns for teachers to stop shootings inside schools. Arming...
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The Children's Crusade 1212 - holy, passionate and fatal
Lasting only from May-Sept 1212, the Children’s Crusade was a popular religious movement in which thousands of young people took crusading vows and set out to recover Jerusalem from the Muslims. This...
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Danila Vassilieff - a Russian artist who influenced the Australian art scene
Danila Ivanovich Vassilieff (1897-1958) was born at Kagalnitskaya, near Rostov-on-Don Russia. Educated at a technical school at Novocherkassk and at a military academy in St Petersburg, Danila...
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Napoleon's last stand in 1815
Let me quote from the excellent Napoleon’s Last Stand paper, written by historian Jean-Noel Bregeon. Arthur Wellesley, the Duke of Wellington, skilfully managed to expel Emperor Napoleon from Portugal...
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Amazing and expensive ceramic finds: Chinese 1722-35 and American 1763-73
I know that ceramics from the later 17th century and all the 18th century are greatly prized by Chinese collectors, for their technical skills and often coloured decoration. The best work came from the...
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