Category Archive: HISTORY
Richard III
(2 Oct. 1452 – 22 Aug. 1485) Art departs from life? Buried (again) in March 2015, Richard III, dug up from a Leicester car park, was given a reverential cortege and buried in Leicester Cathedral. The Tudors would be spinning in their Westminster caskets. Despite the efforts of Horace Walpole, Josephine Tey, and the Society named after him, the infamous scoliotic usurper has received a rather bad press since those kids, Edward V and his younger brother, Richard, Duke of York, ‘vanished’ from the Tower in 1483, and his death at Bosworth Field two years later. Shakespeare’s play (1593), with due…
Continue Reading →Gallipoli
No soft landing (Painting by George Washington Lambert, 'Anzac, the landing 1915')
About 4.29 am on Sunday, 25 April 1915, Australian troops disembarking from several warships and transports in the Dardanelles, learned the answer to their unspoken question: had their approach been detected? It had. As the Official History of Australia In the War of 1914-18, by the not always reliable C. E. W. Bean, states: “The first bullets were striking sparks out of the shingle as the first boat-loads reached the shore.” Many, many thousands fell (Australians, New Zealanders, Indians, Englishmen, Turks). The ANZACs tasted hell. But Constantinople was the real prize; with the Ottoman Empire crumbling away, the strait was its gate, but as narrow…
Continue Reading →Iron Man
Arthur Wellesley and Waterloo (18 June, 1815) Of the 1st Duke of Wellington (1/5/1769 – 14/9/1852), Philip Guedulla asked “How many English streets, squares, monuments, and licensed premises bear the name of Wellington?” TVC would extend this fame phenomenon to the whole Commonwealth: its once favourite pub in Melbourne was the D of W on Flinders Street, the oldest mainland tavern in Australia, now renovated beyond memory. He was born in the same year as Napoleon, and after a stint at Eton, entered the lists of war and politics. He saw action in the Netherlands, India and in the Peninsular…
Continue Reading →Hampton Court
A pile costing many coins and heads...
(TVC’s visit: 2 June 2013) Finding ourselves at a motel near Heathrow with a few hours to kill before take-off, we thought, ‘why not have a look at Hampton Court?’ So we sensibly took a shuttle to terminal 4 of the airport to look for the tube. This chewed up about half an hour with nil result. Then we meandered to Henry VIII’s place on 3 buses, wondering at the complexities of our little visit and the varied responses of the bus drivers, their advice ranging from cheery and correct, to non-committal, to the outright hostile. Got there in the…
Continue Reading →Classical Greek at the WEA
A Greek manuscript accidentally "aged" with WEA hot chocolate.
I have attended many WEA courses over the years – languages, silk painting, photoshopping, website wrangling, grasshopper breeding. At present I am trying to be a good girl and diligently do my homework during the hiatus between the WEA year long courses in Ancient Greek I and Ancient Greek II. But Great Zeus! drilling oneself in Middle Voice Progressive Participles is boring, and as for Thematic Second Aorist Active Imperatives!! I can’t wait for the term to start in late February. Our teacher, Dr Alessandro Boria from Rome is a polyglot of great patience and good cheer. The dozen or so stalwarts who completed…
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