King Alfred’s legendary burning of the cakes was the subject of my first history lesson, delivered by my mother as she popped a tray of rock cakes in the oven. Her notion of where the incident took place was vague; ‘In the woods somewhere’, she said…handing me
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When a Sydney radio station announced the death of actress Anne Bancroft in 2005 there was an immediate response from callers. They spoke of her enduring marriage to comedian Mel Brooks and of her wonderful theatre and movie performances. However, no one mentioned the film for which
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In 1809 Lachlan Macquarie sailed for New South Wales aboard the stores ship Dromedary, to begin his term as Governor of the colony. In 1821 the Dromedary sailed from Sydney back to England, carrying Commissioner John Bigge. Ironically, Bigge was carrying his famously adverse report on Macquarie’s
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In July 1818 Governor Lachlan Macquarie made an inspection tour of the Paterson River in the Lower Hunter region of New South Wales. On July 30 his diary records, ‘We then proceeded to view the rest of the Farms on both sides of the River—finding the soil
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Misconception! ‘A stout Victorian matron in black bombazine, her huge upper arms developed by years of beating outrageous quantities of eggs into churn-loads of butter’. This description fits a widely held view of Mrs Beeton, author of the culinary bible Household Management, but it could not be
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OH I DO LIKE TO BE BESIDE THE SEA! I grew up near Ulverstone, a seaside town on the north west coast of Tasmania. Boxing Day was traditionally beach day. During the nineteen fifties we were still without a car, and travelled the four miles (8km) from
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‘Oh! All that steam! The pudding had just been taken out of the cauldron. Oh! That smell! The same as the one which prevailed on washing day. It is that of the cloth which wraps the pudding. Charles Dickens ‘A Christmas Carol’ Christmas in Australia is a
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CHRISTMAS 1877. At St-Leonards-on-Sea, in the English county of Sussex, a Christmas market was being held in the ‘old town’. The shops and churches were decorated with laurel, holly and ivy. Nevertheless, perhaps due to the unseasonable mild weather, the jollity of the Hastings & St
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A HOUSE BY THE THAMES In 1996 my husband Rob and I bought a holiday house on an 18th century estate called Harleyford, by the banks of the River Thames in Buckinghamshire. For the next fifteen years we divided our time between England and Australia. Originally we
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DEATH BY THE RIVER THAMES Walkers along the Thames Path should take a break at the village of Cumnor, otherwise reached by car via the A420 from Oxford. In the 14th century the monks of Abingdon Abbey built Cumnor Hall, scene of a mysterious death in the
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