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Lesley-Ann Jones' biography,  The Real Life of Freddie Mercury: Mercury: An Intimate Biography of Freddie Mecury,  revealed a bril­liant musician keep­ing his true self hidden from an adoring world-wide audience. Farrokh Bulsara/Freddie Mercury (1946-1991) was born on the small British protectorate island of Zanzibar , a semi-autonomous reg­ion of Tanzania that specialised in spices. When he was 8, his relig­ious Parsi parents Bomi (a British civil servant) and Jer Bulsara sent him to an English boarding school outside Bombay. At St Peter's School , Freddie loved music. The school prin­cipal noticed Freddie's musical talent, and wrote to his parents suggesting that they might want to pay an extra on Freddie's school fees to help him musical­ly. They agreed, and Fred­die began to learn to play the piano. He also became a member of the school choir and took part in theatrical pro­ductions. In 1958, Freddie Bulsara and four other school friends formed a rock band. But it...

Thelma Komesaroff (1923-2015) was a student at University High, a selective school in Melbourne that encouraged its students to stay at school, even throughout the Great Depression and the 1939-45 World War. At a time when most girls and some boys were encouraged to leave school at the minimum legal age, Thelma finished Matricul­ation and was offered a place in the prestigious University of Melbourne . Her passion was English and Russian Literature.    Thelma and Les, post  retirement The U niversity did not close during the war, but students whose husbands, fiancés and fathers were recruited into the Armed Serv­ic­es felt obligated to get paying jobs. Thelma married Lieutenant Les Webb­erley (1922-2015) in 1945; she continued working in a city bookshop when Les returned to University after demobilisation, to finish his engine­er­ing deg­ree.  Once their babies were out of napp­ies, Thelma bec­ame a journalist at The Australian Jewish Herald , pub­lished weekly in ...

Ida Wells (1862-1931) was the first child of James and Lizzie Wells who had been slaves of the Confederate states. The par­ents were freed by the Union, thanks to the Emancipation Proc­lamation in Dec 1862 . However living in Missis­sippi, these African Americans still fac­ed racial prej­ud­ices and discrim­inatory practices. As a member of the progressive Republican Party during Re­const­ruction, Ida’s father was involved with the Freed­man’s Aid Soc­iety  - a group that sent a supply of teachers from the Nor­th and pro­­vided housing for them in the South. And James also served on the first board of trustees at Shaw Univ­ersity-Rust Coll­ege , a school that opened in Holly Springs MS for new­ly freed slaves in 1866. Southern Horrors, one of the many books and booklets written by Ida Wells But Ida suddenly had to leave school when both of her parents and one sibling died of yellow fever in the 1878 epidemic; she became the primary care giver for her 6 surviving siblings! Only in...

The first part comes from the Blavatsky Archives ; many thanks.  Helena Petrovna von Hahn was born at Ekaterinoslav in Southern Russia, in 1831. She was the daughter of Colonel Peter von Hahn, and writer Helena de Fadeyev. Her mat­er­nal grandmother was Princ­ess Helena Dolgorukov, noted botanist-writer. After her mother’s early death in 1842, Helena was brought up with the grand­parents. This clever linguist was a sensitive child, and was soon aware that her psychic powers puzzled others. At 18 she married the much older Nikifor Blavatsky , Vice-Governor of Yerivan Province. The marriage was never consummated and she soon escaped and travelled across Turkey, Egypt and Greece. Only 2 years later, in London in 1851, she met the Mahatma/ Master  Morya of her childhood visions, and fully accepted his guidance. In 1852, Helena left for Canada, the USA, Mexico, South Am­erica and the West Indies, then went via the Cape to India and Tibet. Then to Britain, America again, India vi...

The cultural and linguistic diversity of Australia's resident population has been reshaped over many years by migration. In 2015, 28.2% of the resident population was born over­seas (6.7 million persons). As would be expected from a major member of the British Commonwealth of nations, the greatest proportion of these migrants came from the United Kingdom (5%) and New Zeal­and (3%). And increasingly, migrants are arriving from China (2.0%), India (2%), the Philippines (1%) and Viet­nam (1%). The fastest rate of increase over this period was for people born in Nepal, Pakistan, Brazil, India and Bang­ladesh. As a result of this diversity, Pauline Hanson 's party,  One Nation,  has arisen as a strongly nationalist, right-wing and populist party in Australia. One Nation was founded in 1997, by then-member of the Conservative Party in Federal parliam­ent, Pauline Hanson. Dis-endorsement came before the 1996 federal election because of comments she made about Indigenous Australians,...

Thomas Guthrie was born in Arbroath Scotland in 1803, 12th child of his father David, a merchant and banker. The young Thomas went to Edinburgh University at 12 where he studied as a divinity student, then studied surgery and anatomy. In 1829 Guthrie was appointed to a parish where he intro­duced classes for young people every Sabbath. He also started a village library. In 1837, Guthrie became minister at the Old Greyfriars Kirk in Edinburgh where he saw at first hand the ragged children who lived by begging and stealing. Presumably he knew of Sheriff Watson in Aberdeen who had formed his Industrial Feeding School in 1841. Guthrie converted a room beneath the church as a kitchen and he soon had his first class going. Within a year he had started three Ragged Schools in Edinburgh! In his 1847 pamphlet Plea for Ragged Schools , Rev Guthrie described a unique curriculum - education, meals, clothes, industrial training and Christian instruction. Pupils learned cobbling, tailoring and c...

In 1968 I saw Daniel Cohn-Bendit on tv and decided straight away who I would marry. The man of my dreams would have to be a red-head , Jewish, European-born and educated, politically left wing and a great Bridge player. In 1969, I met my now-husband Joe who was a red-head, Jewish, European and great at Bridge. Only in politics could Joe have been more active – much more active! Now let us look at 1968, as described by David Del Testa* and Sean O’Hagan*. Paris was the place where political action and utopian fantasy came together in the most spectacular fashion. The 1968 protesters initially comprised a few student activists at the Nanterre University in Paris. Protests began against the lack of facilities on their bleak suburban campus. Extraordinarily, the auth­or­ities called the French riot police to quell the small demonstration, and suddenly politicised students joined the rebels. They had a leader, Daniel Cohn-Bendit (b1945). Born in Monat­uban in southern France, he was the...

Last Children of the Raj: British Childhoods in India was edited by Laurence Fleming and published by Radcliffe Press in 2004.  This book is a collection of retrospective reminiscences contributed by people late in their lives, the 120+ story tellers having all spent most of their childhood and adolescence in British India, the Princely States or Burma. The most evocative stories were the personal accounts of powerful em­otional experiences while growing up in India - the sights, smells and sounds of India, their homes, families, staff, schools and holidays. The book was presented in two volumes, perfect for history bloggers who tend to read only one chapter at a time. The first volume (1919-39) was org­anised by geog­raphic regions of India and grouped all of the stories of the child­ren by those areas. The second volume (1939-50) was arranged chronol­og­ically, covering WW2 and soon after. Most of the contributors’ stories were split up and were divided into a few sections. An ...

Edvard Radzinsky wrote Stalin: The First In-depth Biography in 1997. From the archives, he told the story of Stalin's search for total domination, first within the Communist Party and then across the Soviet Union. He des­cribed young Stal­in's long-denied involve­ment with terrorism; the importance of his behind-the-scenes role during the October Revolution; his often hostile relationship with Lenin; the infamous show trials of the 1930s; his secret dealings with Hitler; and his plans to deport all the Soviet Union's Jewish doctors. Radzinsky also examined Stalin's rough relationship with his suicidal wife Nadezhda. All archive-based but shockingly brutal nontheless! I wanted to read a more recently published history for a modern, balanced review of Stalin. So here is  Stalin’s Cult of Personality: its Origins and Progression  (2015) by Julia Kenny. Stalin was born as Josef Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili (1878-1953) in the then-Russian town of Gori, now Georgia. His fath...