Version 1: In 1960 the government social worker handling the adoption told Mum that our birth mother was a sensitive woman who only had half a house and who received no help from her relatives. Version 2: Quoted from the New South Wales Government, Department of Youth and Community Services. ‘Giving you up for adoption was a very difficult decision for your parents to make. They were experiencing financial difficulties and could not live on your father’s wage and support twin

I decided to research the history of Istria because my biological mother was Istrian. It was a bad job from the start and it finished off worse. Nevertheless, I am reminded of the quote from Cicero: ‘To be ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to remain always a child.’ So I proceed with confidence. Here is what I had: Silvana was born in Tar, Istria (today’s Croatia) in 1920, educated in Udine and Florence in Italy, travelled to Australia in 1950 (and thereafter)

The rule about rules is that you have to know the rule before you can break the rule, but there is an exception and that is Point of View, POV. The POV rule says that the section of the work you are writing must be written from the point of view of one person, but this is not always easy to spot when you’re the author. Try as I might, I dread the assessment of another writer who informs me that I have failed yet again. For instance, I start off an action scene from the perspe

I confess to being terrified of writing action scenes, although I love reading them. When my publisher Penmore Press sent me out the PDF Book Block of His Most Italian City for proof reading I nearly fell over backwards when I read my first attempt at an action scene that had given me such labour and angst. It actually sounded like real action. I wrote to my editor expressing my amazement but, I have to confess (again), writing one now still fills me with dread and anticipati

Amin al-Husseini. Related on the female side to Yasser Arafat, former leader of the Palestinian Liberation Organization, revered by...

GAVRILO PRINCIP is famous for Gavrila Princip Street in Belgrade, home to my favourite restaurant Zavičaj's, where I have enjoyed three times now the best craft sausage, roast potatoes, cabbage salad, mustard and a memorable house red. GAVRILO PRINCIP is also famous for assassinating, in Sarajevo Bosnia, the Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and starting World War One. "Assassinate" is too strong a word. I believe he was provoked. The under

LINK VINČA, Serbia - Europe's First Civilization (myprehistory.blogspot.com)

If I said that this work was a resource for every expression of antisemitism in history, I would not be far from the truth. Its research...

‘Posing for his sexual partner as a martyred saint, Gabriele d’Annuncio was titillating himself with the image of a young man tortured and killed.’ The Pike, Lucy Hughes-Hallett’s biography of the Italian poet Gabriele d’Annuncio, is an unrivalled story of decadence and hedonism requiring, at times, a suspension of disbelief. Death, sadism and eroticism are constant and intertwining themes, to the extent that I wondered, when d’Annuncio urged young Italians into World War 1,

‘”On the morning of Palm Sunday, while children slept their innocent sleep and the church bells were ringing for prayer to God, the German aeroplanes without warning let fall a rain of bombs on this historic town”’. So wrote King Peter of Yugoslavia after the bombing of Belgrade 6th April 1941. ‘The King went on to describe the terror of the women and children who were machine-gunned as they fled from their homes by low-flying planes.’ (1) Hitler termed this invasion Operatio

You don’t meet men like Pope Pius XII anymore. Erudite and aristocratic, he was far removed from his proletarian people yet he confessed a quiet ambition to one day be their Pope. Readers of David Kertzer’s book about him are lucky. They have the benefit of knowing that Hitler was evil. For Pius XII, it was as if the truth crept up on him only slowly while he battled the demons that bound him, his fear of communism and his belief that the Roman Catholic Church in Europe must

‘You who burned my house and killed my child, who shelters beneath a foreign wing, a traitor who accepts a salary from the enemy! Did you...

December 1941: Fleeing the German destruction of Užice in Serbia, Tito and the Partisans crossed the River Drina in winter, climbed the mountains of Bosnia on the other side, and walked through the forests. Bosnia Herzegovina is a very mountainous country. In winter it is snow bound. As someone who has driven through Bosnia in the snow, I have difficulty understanding why the Nazis thought that they could successfully invade the country. Even today, the r

Komiža, Vis - port of the Partisan and Allied fleet September 1943 – Fascist Italy capitulates to the Allies. Nazi Germany invades the...

‘Despite his experiences at Drvar, Tito had not lost his liking for caves,’ wrote Fitzroy Maclean, Churchill’s liaison officer with the Yugoslav Partisans. Less than a fortnight after his dramatic rescue from a cave near Drvar in Bosnia during Operation Rösselsprung, Tito installed himself in yet another cave halfway up yet another mountain on the island of Vis, three hours east of Split on the Croatian coast. At this time, Vis remained the only island in the Adriatic unoccup

I’ve always marvelled at the audacity of the Croatian priesthood pushing to canonize Aloysius Stepinac, knowing the crimes of the WW2...

Having a flying lesson was next on my bucket list. ‘You could have a new career as a drug courier,’ said my brother when I told him. ‘Don’t worry about the risks,’ said an underground mining friend. So I filled in the waiver and duly watched the safety video that showed a small American plane nose-diving into the ground. The explanation for the crash followed, and I found that reassuring. I had not been apprehensive, in any case. I love flying. I’ve flown in many small planes

Here is my photograph of the Partisan cenotaph in Tar, Istria, the village my mother was born in. Her family name was Mikatović. They...

Foreword by Milan Rakovac 1982, translated by Margaret Walker Food! – what and when to eat it and how to prepare it, and in Istria that has always been an important question. Particularly WHAT, because there has not always been enough food here. In the time of Bishop Jurja Dobrile in the first half of the nineteenth century, Istria was ravaged by hunger, and Dobrile gathered help by sending a desperate appeal to Vienna. Under Italy, in one village of Poreć, the father of the

Some years ago, I was chatting at work with an Arab woman from Egypt when the topic of democracy came up. ‘Arabs can’t do democracy,’ she...