sandr020

The Nabataean Kingdom once stretched from Dam­ascus and in­cl­uded parts of the Sinai. Located amid rugged desert canyons and mountains in what is now the SW corner of Jor­dan, Petra was once a thriving trad­ing centre and the capital of this kingdom from 400 BC–106 AD. I have spent only 1.5 days of my entire long life there, well worth the tour from Amman or Jerusalem . The Nabateans were Arabic-speaking nomads who sel­ected the best oases to set­tle in. And they used the inac­c­es­sib­le moun­tains to pro­t­ect themselves from bandits and high­way robbers. But these people were a desert people, so they had no archit­ect­ural heritage of their own. The Petra style was therefore a jumble of influences absorb­ed al­ong the trading routes: Egypt­ian, As­syrian, Hellenistic, Mesopot­amian and Roman imagery.  Monastery The treasury By the C2nd BC, Petra was already in­ternationally famous for its natural and archit­ect­ural beau­ty, for its wealth and its pink colours. Petra had c30,...

John Bingham, 7th Earl of Lucan (1934 - ?) was the older son of George Bingham, 6th Earl of Lucan, an Anglo-Irish peer. John’s mother went into full time care when he was a toddler and he was raised by a maid. After WW2, this good-looking but cold aristocrat served with the Coldstream Guards in Germany and later worked as a merchant banker. But in his 20s he became a member of the very classy Clermont Club , spent a fortune on racing power boats and drove a very flashy car. In 1963 he married Veronica Duncan , a woman he did not like but felt obligated to marry because of their ad­van­c­ing ages (nearly 30). They quickly had three children. Veronica had been beaten by her husband throughout their marr­iage with a cane and lash; then he had sex with her bleeding body straight afterwards ! He was gambling full time and inevitably lost everything. John moved out of the Belgravia family home and a bitter custody battle ensued. He began to spy on his wife, intending to regain cus­tody of t...

The  Rock of Gibraltar  is a nar­row sandy isthmus off the Iberian Pen­in­sula. Being limestone, the 6sq km Rock is riddled with 140+ caves. Off the eastern cliffs of the rock a flat, sandy plain stret­ched out towards the Mediterranean. The Strait of Gibraltar is the narrow neck separ­ating Europe from Africa, the only link between the Atl­ant­ic Ocean and the Med­iter­ranean Sea. Sin­ce the Prophet died in Medina in 632 AD, the pro­g­ress of Islam’s armies was rapid. Berber  Tarik-ibn-Zeyad  land­ed in 710 AD and from 742 on, the Moors defended their rock with a fort. In 1068, the Arab Gover­nor on Gib­ral­tar ordered that a strong­er  Moorish Castle  be built to watch events across the Strait. The castle had the largest keep and the tallest towers in all the Iberian Peninsula, plus buildings, gates and for­tified walls. In 1160 the Caliph of Mor­occo commissioned a fully fortif­ied city. The Rock rem­ain­ed in Arab hands until an unexp­ect­ed Spanish att...

After over a decade of austere Cromwellian rule, the restorat­ion of the monarchy in 1660 led to a resurgence of the arts in England. The court of King Charles II ((1630-85) became the centre for the pat­ronage of leading artists and the collecting of great works of art, which served a) as decoration for the royal apart­ments and b) to glorify the restored monarchy and rein­force Charles’ position as the rightful king. Now an exh­ibition called Charles II: Art and Power at the Queen’s Gall­ery is on at Buckingham Palace, until 13th May 2018. In May 1660 Charles II made his triumphant return to the thrones of England and Ireland, end­ing a dec­ade of republican Commonwealth under Oliver Cromwell . After 14 years in exile, Charles II was keenly aware of the im­p­­ortance of princely tradition and magnificent display in en­for­cing his right to the throne and his position as Head of the Ch­urch. He ordered royal regalia and crown jewels to repl­ace those sold off or melted down by Parl...

Since first writing about art stolen by the Nazis during WW2 and hid­den in various underground salt mines in Germany and Aust­ria, I have read everything I could on The Monument Men . When the Nazis found the Altaussee Salt Mines in Alp­ine Bavaria, for examp­le, they were delighted to ship their 6500 stolen art treas­ures into this salt-heavy, pastoral hideout. Today, ever since the film Monument Men appeared in our cinemas, tourists have flocked to the Altaussee Mines. When I heard of the Krakow Salt Mines Museum of Art on tv, I assumed it was another amazing memorial to art stolen by the Nazis during WW2. Wrong! Nonetheless it is fascinating. The Krakow Salt Works Museum is a large exhibition space in the Wieliczka Salt Mine in Southern Pol­and, established after WW2. The mine, which continuously pro­duced table salt from the Middle Ages on, now consists of Two Worlds, A] an underground with a large exhibit in the salt mine 135m below and B] an above­ground in the Salt Works Castl...

English King James I granted a charter to the Virginia Co. to form a North America settlement in 1606. The Virginia Co. was to search for local riches and a sea trade route to the Pac­ific Ocean. 100 colonists left England on three ships and landed on a narrow peninsula in the James River. Cap­tain John Smith chose the inland location to hide them from Spanish ships and to pro­vide protection from any Native American enemies. John Smith and the English colonists stayed near the Powhatan on nearby Jamestown Island, but later began to explore out-lying areas. In the meantime Smith terrorised Native people when he put guns to heads of village chiefs, demanding food and supplies. In fact the early 1600s were a horrible time for all local tribes. Young children were targets of rape, so the Native women offered themselves to men, to keep their children safe. The Powhatan people were in an unwinnable situation since the English government offered them no protection. The true story of ...

Some history Acre/Akko was conquered by Pharaoh Ramses II (1279-1213 BC), then by the Greeks, the Persians and the Syrian Sel­eucids. Herod the Great and Roman Emperor Vespasian (69-79 AD) used Akko and Caesarea for their campaign. The town pros­pered in Byzantine times and Om­mayad times, when it was the port for their capital in Damascus. The Crusaders conquered Jerusalem in 1099 and Akko in 1104. They renamed it St Jean d'Acre and made it the head quarters of the Knights of St John. The Italian port cities est­ablished trading posts in Acre, and made it a flourishing port. After Jerusalem fell in 1187, Acre became the large capital of the Crusader kingdom. In 1219 St Fran­cis of Assisi visited the town and estab­lish­ed a nun­nery. In 1228 Emperor Freder­ick II landed here during his Crus­ade, as did Louis IX of France in 1250. Soon afterwards there was a bitter civ­il war, between the two Christian orders, The Knights Hospital­l­ers of St John and The Templars. In 1290, the Cr...

The women’s suffrage movement in Britain had been fractured in 1903. This was when Emmeline Pankhurst led a break­away group from the Nat­ional Union of Women’s Suffrage Societ­ies, arguing that it had become too content waiting for male approval, rather than actively demanding women’s rights. The militant Women’s Social and Political Union , run by the Pankhursts, had begun disrupting political meetings attended by prominent MPs. The suffragettes’ tact­ics reawakened public interest in the issue, but the Pankhursts were often seen as overly autocratic. Robert Wainwright* wrote of a young actress named Muriel ­Matters (1877-1969) who grew up in South Australia . The art of elocution back then required its exp­on­ents to weave a tale onstage, often set to music or poetry. Muriel trained with Lionel Logue , a family friend who later helped the stuttering King George VI. From an Australian state where women got the vote in 1894, Mur­iel arr­ived in London with little money, some let­t...

I have happily read the book Acland Street: The Grand Lady of St Kilda , written by Dr Judith Buck­rich (Nov 2017). It ex­plores the history of architecture on Acland St, starting from the 1850s and early settlement, through swamps, race courses, development of the Acland St village, Vict­orian prosperity and boarding house poverty. Buckrich searched the archives and inter­viewed famous peop­le from the Melbourne Jewish community who had a connection to Acland St. She recognised that the street was one of Melbourne's most important because it mirrored so much of the social change that occurred in Australian cities over 175 years. It encapsulated the social and cultural history of the city in a unique way, having been part of Melbourne’s entertainment scene for decades, as well as home to the wealthiest and poorest of its citizens. The Melbourne suburb of St Kilda was named after Sir Thomas Dyke Acland, 10th Baronet (1787–1871) of Killerton Manor in Devon, a British politician and ...

Malta (pop c370,000) is in the mid Mediterranean Sea, half way between Europe and Africa; Spain and Israel. So the country’s str­ateg­ic position attracted ev­er­y expans­ion­ist nation to take over the tiny Maltese archip­el­ago. The ancient Pho­e­nic­ians settled around the natural Grand Harb­our. But it was the Romans who govern­ed these islands for centuries and first built the city of Medina . Consider the 60 AD shipwreck of the Apostle St Paul . During his 3 months on Malta living in the Medina cata­c­ombs, he taught Christ­ian­ity and nominated Malta’s first bishop. In St Paul's Ch­urch, the catacombs were for Ch­ri­stian bur­ials and rock altars. In 535, the island was integrated into the Christine Byzantine province of Sicily. After arriving from Sicily in 870 during the Arab–Byzantine wars , Arabs ruled Malta until the Normans arrived in 1091. To con­so­l­idate their gains in Sicily and to prev­ent the Arabs from regroup­ing near Sic­ily, the Normans stayed until their ...