The Tumbrel Diaries

In moments of melancholy, when, for whatever reason, the heart requires a little balm, or the spirits need lifting, I reach for my deeply un...

Mrs. Sage is something of a mystery, although Highfill, Burnim & Langhans correctly described her as “actress, aeronaut, wardrobe-keeper...

We art museum curators are often asked which of the many paintings for the time being in our care is our favorite. It really is an impossibl...

I was fortunate during my brief tenure in the late 1980s as an aide at Government House, Melbourne, to have been assigned for a few days the...

This blog began its life, and acquired its name , after the onset of the financial crisis of 2008, and that gloomy backdrop has since perio...

John Theophilus Daubuz, the bachelor brother of Lewis Charles Daubuz, is a fascinating but fugitive figure. He was described in contemporane...

The Daubuz family were Huguenot refugees from France. According to Susan E. Gay ( Old Falmouth: The Story of the Town from the Days of the K...

A good proportion of my working life is spent immersed in what we in art museums call “provenance research,” in other words the history of t...

In my garden there is a weeping cherry ( Prunus subhirtella pendula ), which, only for the second time in my stewardship, erupted into flowe...

Watching The Queen’s Diamond Jubilee address to both Houses of Parliament in Westminster Hall the day before yesterday, I was struck by the...