Category Archive: WRITING & LITERATURE
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 →Apart from Beatrice
Dante Society (SA), Adelaide, 7 July 2024 The afternoon was an homage to ‘The Eternal Feminine,’ and Beatrice hardly got a mention. The Honourable Jing Lee MLC (below, centre) gave a pleasant ‘welcome to all countries’ in emphasis of the upside of multiculturalism, and then we heard from a number of authors from the Ascolta Women Inc. Collective (a creative writing workshop formed in 2020 under the shadow of Covid), to launch their latest anthology, Stories from La Terra, and they read out a few excerpts. Gaspara Stampa (1523-1554) (see main image in B/W) had an unhappy love affair with…
Continue Reading →Scatterbrain
By E. H. Visiak (1878-1972) He goes wool-gathering ‘neath the stars; He hath a screw loose: Scatterbrain. He hath a window loose that jars Open to heaven, and falls shut again.
Continue Reading →Dinner at Antoine’s (Frances Parkinson Keyes)
(1949). “Keyes” rhymes with “skies” not “keys”. Being privy to arcane pronunciations is the sort of marker which separates those who are in New Orleans Society from those who are not. Only the former know that the sidewalk in 1940’s-50’s New Orleans is called the “banquette”. Only the former are admitted to Antoine’s Restaurant on St Louis Street without a long wait on the banquette, if at all. Orson Foxworth is certainly one of the former and, on a warm afternoon, is immediately lead into the special lunch room when he entertains his niece and several intimate friends. The layout…
Continue Reading →The Old City
By Margot Jakobsen Moments of teenage conflict with Dad, explode into my adult mind. “You treat me like the enemy!”, he says. “You are!” Then softening, “Dad, you’re damaged by the war.” “What!? Are you a psychiatrist, now?” “You don’t win by yelling the loudest!” “You don’t respect me.” “You have to deserve respect!” No surrender. I left Adelaide for Sydney, and that was hard for him to forgive. Now my father, the school librarian, is in a beige, plastic casket in the wall to ceiling shelves that I made some time ago out of cypress floorboards. I enclosed some…
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