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Canberra, ACT 2600, Australia
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Magna Carta
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On this day eight hundred years ago at Runnymede near Windsor, King John signed Magna Carta.
A passion eating into your vitals
The ‘Mad Dentist of Wynyard Square’ in court, 18 December 1865
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The salacious and sordid details of Henry Kinder’s death transfixed Sydneysiders with a case combining murder with seduction, mesmerism, blackmail and poisoning.
Waterloo and Mrs. Moore
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Beyond the centenary of the ANZAC landings at Gallipoli, a number of other notable anniversaries converge this year. Waterloo deserves a little focussed consideration, for in the decades following 1815 numerous Waterloo and Peninsular War veterans came to Australia.
Cocky McGrath
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The long life and few words of a vice-regal cockatoo
Very fine and very like
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When did notions of very fine and very like become separate qualities of a portrait? And what happens to 'very like' in the age of photographic portraiture?
The Bath Butterfly
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The caricaturist and engraver James Gillray's biting satires about Sir Joseph Banks.
Longest reign
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Queen Elizabeth II is now the longest-reigning British sovereign
Centenary of ANZAC
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Just now we pause to mark the centenary of ANZAC, the day when, together with British, other imperial and allied forces, the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps landed at Gallipoli at the start of the ill-starred Dardanelles campaign.
Angkor Wat
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Nothing quite prepares the first-time visitor to Cambodia for the scale and grandeur of the monuments of the ancient Khmer civilisation of Angkor.
Happy New Year
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This year (in March) we will celebrate the twentieth anniversary of the formal establishment of the National Portrait Gallery. In the life of institutions, twenty years is not a long time.
Talking heads
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In their own words lead researcher Louise Maher on the novel project that lets the Gallery’s portraits speak for themselves.
The consolations of religion
A bushranger meets his maker, 6 January 1826
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James McCabe provides proof that hanging wasn’t necessarily a fate reserved for the perpetrators of murder and other deeds of darkest hue.
Lord Kitchener
Imperial strategist
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Once central to military strategy and venerated in patriotic households, Lord Kitchener is now largely forgotten.
Not perspiring, but glowing.
The cultural history of radiance.
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Angus Trumble explores the creative manifestations of radiance.
Queen Victoria
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Last Sunday I had the privilege of appearing at the Canberra Writers’ Festival in conversation with Julia Baird. The subject of our session was Julia’s recent biography, Victoria the Queen: An Intimate Biography of the Woman who Ruled an Empire.
Goods and chattels
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I have been reading systematically through the ads in the earliest issues of the Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser, such a rich vein of information about certain aspects of daily life in Regency Sydney.