Category Archives: Uncategorized

As you might know, as well as my gig at the Athenaeum, I’m back with the National Trust, this time cataloguing the contents of Lake View House. Like a lot of historic properties, it has been ‘dressed’ ie artefacts from … Continue reading →

I’ve just finished Linda Stratman’s 2019 compilation of excerpts from the Illustrated police News. The Illustrated Police News, the ‘police’ in the name refers to crime, the Victorians referred to news of criminal activities as ‘police news’ in much the … Continue reading →

Vicars, especially nineteenth century ones. Often derided, I’m a quiet fan of Victorian vicars, and their  watercolourist daughters. In remoter nineteenth century communities in colonial Australia the Church of England vicar, and it was most definitely the Church of England … Continue reading →

While I was researching something else entirely, I had this light bulb moment about trams, and why they were a product of the late Victorian and Edwardian eras. A tram in Launceston Tasmania on a sunny Edwardian afternoon A lot … Continue reading →

‘Seven Colonies’ was a phrase used in nineteenth century Australia and New Zealand to refer to the six Australian colonies and New Zealand in the run up to federation, which formed a little squabbling group of British polities a long … Continue reading →

I was reading about the history of the gold rush in Otago in the 1860s, and the author consistently referred to the seven colonies – basically the six colonies of colonial Australia plus New Zealand. And certainly in the 1860s … Continue reading →

In 1953 L P Hartley wrote The past is a foreign country, they do things differently there, something doubly so when dealing with two quite different and alien cultures – Tsarist Russia and Meiji Japan. Winston Churchill, always one for … Continue reading →

Tasmania. For reasons too complicated to explain in an opening paragraph, we were going to Tasmania for a few days. I knew nothing about Tasmania – I had never been there and my ideas, such as they were, had been … Continue reading →