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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‘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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CLENCH YOUR PEN AND KEEP YOUR MOUTH SHUT! Authors are constantly advised not to respond to negative reviews. I fully agree; you simply cannot argue with another person’s opinion. It is worth remembering that many literary classics suffered a hatchet job when first published. I particularly love
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Unlike my ancestors, I have never thought of England as ‘home’. However, I did grow up a little confused about my national identity. At primary school in Tasmania we stood before the flag on Empire Day and sang God Save the Queen before being handed a packet
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Blood On My Boots was one of the titles I considered for my book on the Thames Path. I love social history , especially murder mysteries, and many bodies have ended up in the river. The book was eventually published as All Along the River;
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JOHN RASHALL THE PREACHER AND THE POET ALFRED TENNYSON An interesting aspect of my book The Water Doctor’s Daughters, is the lifelong friendship of the poet Alfred Tennyson and the Reverend John Rashdall. The pair had grown up together in rural Lincolnshire, and were contemporaries at Cambridge
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APOLOGIES IN ADVANCE, THIS STORY IS A BIT COMPLICATED! When St John’s church at Parramatta (New South Wales) was being remodelled circa 1817, Elizabeth Macquarie offered some advice to the project’s architect, Lieutenant John Watts (1786-1873). In 1895 Watts’ daughter, Mrs Margaret Elizabeth Bagot wrote; ‘Mrs Macquarie
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