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The wonderful life and sad death of Bobby Kennedy: a book review
Matthews' book, 20171968 was a year of bitter protest-marches and sit-ins in Australia against the Vietnam War and against conscription. As a university student then, I remember it well ☹. But in...
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AA Milne, Harrods, Winnie the Pooh Bear, Winnipeg, London and New York
AA Milne's childhood teacher was HG Wells, author of the 1897 novel War of the Worlds. Wells was Milne’s botany teacher, taking him and his classmates on field trips around the country. From the...
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Hotels for working women in New York (1860s-1920s) - middle class Vs working...
The mid-C19th growth of manufacturing in the NE cities increased demand for female labour. When newly arrived in cities, single women had to find their own lodging. Alas the much lower wages paid...
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First public toilets for men in Britain... oh yes, and eventually for women
Privies in New York, 19th centuryCredit: Ultimate History ProjectIn 1851 in Britain, the Great Exhibitionshow-cased the first public flushing toilet, created by Brighton plumber George Jennings. The...
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Rosa Parks, heroic role model in the battle against racism
Rosa McCauley (1913-2005) was born in Alabama where she and her parents lived with the maternal grand parents, and where her younger brother Sylvester was born. Rosa’s mother Leona was a teacher, and...
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My favourite history blogs (in English)
My favourite summary of history blog posts used to be found in The History Carnival. This monthly showcase of blog writing was active from 2005-17, hosted at a different blog each month to provide a...
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The Black Book - people in UK targeted on a Nazi list in 1940
The Sonderfahndungsliste GB/Special Search List was known under the popular name of the Black Book. This was the Nazis’ potential arrest list, drawn up for the period immediately after their inevitably...
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Julian Barnes - a very prolific and talented author
Back in 1970s, I decided to read the winner of each Booker Prize for Literature, written in a British country. Bernice Rubens, Nardine Gordimer, Penelope Fitzgerald, Thomas Keneally, Anita Brookner,...
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Who could reduce the chaos of racist, pro-Fascist KKK - only Superman!
KKK and leader, 1946American racist organisations were well documented since the start of the Ku Klux Klan. But the situation in the inter-war years was totally unexpected. The Friends of New...
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Moscow Choral Synagogue is beautiful again
Moscow Choral SynagogueMen's section on the ground floor; women's section upstairs on either sideThe Pale of Settlement (1791-1917) was a western region of Imperial Russia in which permanent residency...
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A great historian for non-scholars - John Julius Norwich
John Julius Cooper (1929-2018) was the son of a society woman and a special political dynamo. His mum, Lady Diana Manners Cooper (died 1986), was a daughter of the Duke of Rutland. She was a society...
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Gold rush and spa towns: Daylesford and Hepburn Springs
Villa Parma, Daylesford, 1864 Indigenous Australians were the first to settle in Hepburn SpringsandDaylesford (pop c3600) area of Victoria, particularly the Dja Dja Wurrung tribes. Pastoralists didn’t...
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Minister for Aboriginal Affairs Robert Tickner: his adoption experience
My late father Les was legally adopted in 1939, when he was 17.5 years old. The 5th of 6 children born to a working class family, each of the youngest 4 children was fostered out to an aunt or uncle...
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living the Old Rectory dream - classical proportions, symmetry and natural light
The C18th was the best age for the English vicarage as the educated Anglican clergy was now living in comfort, in the reign of Queen Anne (1702-14). Firstly Queen Anne's Bounty was a fund established...
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Argentina's rugby team - murdered in the Dirty War in 1976
The Silencedby Claudio FavaI remember the commotion of Argentina under the democratically elected Isabel Perón, who served as President between 1974-6 before ousted by a right-wing military coup....
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Como House - Melbourne's loveliest mid C19th home
Front veranda of Como House, surrounded by gardensIn discussing rare Australian colonial architecture in Melbourne, I wrote briefly about grand residence in Como Avenue, South Yarra called...
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The Monster Petition for women's suffrage in Victoria - 1891
Each completed paper page was pasted to one, long linen fabricand rolled onto a spindle. 260 metres long and very heavyVictoria’s Constitution of 1855 did not give women the right to vote. Women...
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please protect Preston Market, fresh food & multi-cultural hub in Melbourne
Front entrance to Preston MarketColonial occupation of the Port Phillip District from 1835 resulted in the survey and subdivision of the land, with the land being taken up largely for grazing, and then...
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Can modern DNA science solve a VERY cold case? The Somerton Man, Adelaide
Police photographed The Somerton Man straight after people found the body on the beach. Slumped against a wall on...
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pre-war Nazi girls' school on UK coast - read the history, see the film
Bexhill Museum’s curator Julian Porter explained that Bexhill-on-Sea had German associations going back to 1804, when infantry from the King’s German Legion was based in the East Sussex barracks. And...
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