This article from The West Australian in 1937 reports on a number of new knighthoods awarded as part of the King’s Coronation Honours. For the first time, the article informs readers, the recipients were ‘dubbed’ by the…
This interest piece from the Western Mail in 1954 introduces readers to Saltbush Bill, a travelling Australian folk band created and led by Queenslander William Rawle. The article likens the band to the troubadours of the medieval period, because…
This article from The Argus in 1955 quotes Mr W. A. Townsley, a lecturer in Political Science, on the outlook of Australian Universities as ‘still mediaeval’. Criticising lecturing on the reasoning that it turns out ‘poorly…
Victor Daley was an Irishman who came to Australia as a young man. He wrote romantic verse and was referred to by Vivian Smith as, “one of the most attractive poets of the nineties in Australia” (Vivian Smith, ‘Poetry’, The…
As a young man, William H. (‘Will’) Ogilvie spent 12 years in outback Australia, ‘horse-breaking, droving, mustering and camping out on the vast plains’ before returning home to Scotland in 1901 (See Clement Semmler, 'Ogilvie,…
This political cartoon by ‘Hop’ enacts a scene from William Shakespeare’s historical play, Henry V. In the scene, Fluellen the Welshman angrily berates the unfortunate Pistol, a crony of Sir John Falstaff, and forces him to eat a…
At the time Victor Daley composed this poem, a debate had erupted over whether chivalry and romance, at least within the Australian context, were dead. That was certainly the argument put forward in an earlier poem, ‘Romance’ by L. D.,…
Henry Lawson produced several interrelated medieval poems c. 1908 which The Bulletin published. ‘Because of her Father’s Blood’ is the third poem of the Sir William series. While the knight is away crusading his aunt, Dame Ruth, is…