Category Archive: HISTORY
Henry ‘Chips’ Channon Diaries Volume 1
(1918 – 1938) (Edited by Simon Heffer) In the elusive search for historical truth, contemporary records such as diaries, even unreliable ones, can be valuable. Private diaries in particular, as they can break free of censorship, even self-censorship to a degree. Furthermore, insider diaries can give great insight into the mores of the times. Classic examples include Pepys, Boswell, Francis Kilvert, Anne Frank and Alan Clark. Henry “Chips” Channon (the nickname came when he roomed at Christ Church College, Oxford with a friend nicknamed “Fish”) was born in 1897 in Chicago, son of a wealthy family; served with the Red…
Continue Reading →Angels in America
By Tony Kushner; University of Adelaide Theatre Guild; directed by Hayley Horton – Part 1 (‘The Millennium Approaches’) 2 May 2024; Part 2 (‘Perestroika’) on 3 May 2024 The AIDS epidemic hit New York City the worst (San Francisco came second). It emerged in the early 1980s, primarily in the gay community, and became synonymous therewith, but was in no way actually so localised. Poorly understood initially by medical science, it was first tagged as Kaposi’s Sarcoma (cancerous lesions on skin, lymph nodes, mouth and other organs). Like all plagues, it caused fear, suspicion, mistrust, prejudice and panic. Lives and…
Continue Reading →Traduce the Juice
O.J. Simpson I was in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, on 3 October 1995, the day O.J. was acquitted (because no gloves fitted). The predominantly black staff at my hotel celebrated the verdict, high-fiving each other. On the other side of the country, Los Angeles gave both a huge sigh of relief and a squawk of anger and disbelief. Absurdly, the trial had taken on racial connotations because it seems that then, as now, it is impossible to view many awful events through anything other than the prism of race (or gender, although ‘Race beats gender’). And celebrity beats everything. The best…
Continue Reading →Quilts: The Fabric of War
(1760-1900) Exhibition at the Roche Museum, 22 February, 2024 / Book and collection by Annette Gero This exhibition of applique and geometric masterpieces, all made from military fabrics, was simply stunning. Dr. Annette Gero, an acknowledged expert on quilt history, has collected these sumptuous pieces, featuring complex, intricate patterns, to mythical and historical narratives. Her book based on this collection is published by The Beagle Press and available through the David Roche Foundation House Museum, Adelaide. We saw a dazzling array of styles and subject-matter. The main image is an English Intarsia Quilt, c. 1870, by Michael Zumpf, a Hungarian,…
Continue Reading →Menzies versus Evatt
By Anne Henderson (2023) Robert Menzies and Herbert Evatt were both born before Australia was – in 1894 to be exact, in the colonies of Victoria and New South Wales respectively, but they would blossom under the soon-to-be-created Federal Commonwealth. Their natural intelligence and Victorian work ethic set them on the path to success, and to some degree, Australia became the better for their struggle, in that they brilliantly represented, and advocated for, different yet necessary principles and practices of the nation’s democracy. Menzies went to the Victorian bar, and still in short pants lead in the Engineers’ Case (1920),…
Continue Reading →