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Hans and his daughter, Nora Heysen - a great art exhibition in 2019
In the late 1880s and 1890s the Heidelberg School painters painted the Australian scene with satisfying accuracy. NSW's National Art Gallery created an exhibition at Grafton Galleries in London in...
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Legal London: training barristers in the Inns of Court
In 1346 the Knights Hospitallers formally leased out Inner and Middle Temple Fleet St to practitioners who called themselves the Society of the Temple. On a square mile in the City of...
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The true story of penicillin: Fleming, Florey, Chain and the team
It wasn't until the late C19th that scientific studies of anti-biotics began. French chemist Louis Pasteur discovered that infectious diseases spread by bacteria; he observed that mould inhibited the...
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Ned Kelly collections in Victoria
The Victorian architecture in rural Beechworth is beautiful. Visitors should see the Burke Memorial Museum, opened in 1857 and later named in honour of explorer Robert O’Hara Burke (1821-61), after his...
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an important Thonet Design exhibition, Munich
THONET & DESIGN is an exhibition at the Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich until Feb 2020. Founded in 1819 by Bopparder master joiner Michael Thonet, one of the world's leading manufacturers of bent...
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Mendel Beilis' blood-libel trial in Kiev 1913
My grandfather told me this story many times in the 1950s. Grandpa was only an adolescent in 1913, at a time when persecution of Jews had never abated. But he believed that immigration visas suddenly...
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Was Beethoven inspired by Napoleon Bonaparte?
Intellectuals throughout Europe looked on Napoleon as a hero at first, including German artists such as Goethe. As a youth, Ludwig von Beethoven (1770-1827) was attracted by the ideals of the French...
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A great new art book: The Museum of Lost Art
The Museum of Lost Art is an excellent book by American author-academic Noah Charney (Phaidon 2018). He asked the reader to imagine a “museum” of lost art, one which would contain more masterpieces...
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The Versailles Peace Treaty (1919) was doomed to fail
WW1 had brought about unprecedented human suffering in European history. Almost every nation across Europe was crippled by the war. Of the 60 million European soldiers who were mobilised from 1914–8, 8...
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Djerba Island, Tunisia
I have spent many of our winter holidays (July) around the Mediterranean. This included Spain, France, Italy, Malta, Yugoslavia, Greece, Turkey, Cyprus, Israel and Egypt, but never further west...
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Sly grog, razor gangs and prostitution in Sydney
Even after Australian Federation (1901) in some Sydney suburbs, gambling, prostitution, narcotics and guns were not just tolerated, but often legal. But in 1905, the country’s government began to...
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32 years to prove the dingo took Azaria Chamberlain. Shame Australia :(
Lindy Chamberlain (b1948) is a New Zealander who married New Zealand-born Michael Chamberlain (1944–2017) in Nov 1969. For the first five years of their marriage they lived in Tasmania, then in...
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Marcel Marceau - war hero and world's best mime
Marcel Mangel/Marceau (1923-2007), the legendary mime, was born in Strasbourg on the German border and raised in Lille until WW2. There he was introduced to music and theatre by his Polish father,...
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The splendid coronation album of King George VI: 1937
The album celebrated the Coronation of King George VI and Queen Elizabeth with their childhoods, their wedding, an explanation of coronations over the centuries and great full-page photos. The...
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Walter Gropius and Bauhaus' 100th anniversary: 1919-2019
Bauhaus Academy was Eden for architects in those revolutionary times when the new wave of Bauhaus designers followed Walter Gropius (1883-1969), not traditional or classical architects. It...
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Dr Marie Curie: my greatest medical hero Guest post
Marie Sklodowska Curie (1867-1934) was born into an intellectual family in Warsaw. After her father lost his teaching job due to his political activism, the family struggled financially. Her sister...
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History of New Orleans after 1699
Frenchman Robert de la Salle sailed down the Mississippi River in 1682, explored the area and claimed it for the French Mississippi Company. In 1699, a French-Canadian explorer Pierre le Moyne sailed...
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Did Scotland have the most impressive Enlightenment Era?
After King Charles’ death, Jacobite Rebellions, failure of the Darien Scheme on the Isthmus of Panama (1698–1700) and the social and economic instability that followed, a very slow recovery was...
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Jorn Utzon and Sydney Opera House
Sydney Opera House sits on Bennelong Point, a space first developed as a fort named after Governor Macquarie. It was later used as a tram shed which was demolished in 1958. The project of the Sydney...
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Vincent van Gogh "At Eternity's Gate" (film review)
At Eternity’s Gate (2018) is the latest film about Vincent van Gogh 1853–90 (Willem Dafoe), one of the western world’s most famous or infamous artists. Academy Award-nominated director Julian...
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