Rijeka: a decadent poet and Italian land claims
‘Posing for his sexual partner as a martyred saint, Gabriele d’Annuncio was titillating himself with the image of a young man tortured...
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Margaret
Walker
Author of historical fiction
Yugoslavia in World War 2
mwalkeristra
mwalkeristra
- Oct 9
WHY HITLER (AND CHURCHILL) NEEDED BELGRADE
‘”On the morning of Palm Sunday, while children slept their innocent sleep and the church bells were ringing for prayer to God, the...
mwalkeristra
- Sep 16
The Pope at War by David Kertzer - book review
You don’t meet men like Pope Pius XII anymore. Erudite and aristocratic, he was far removed from his proletarian people yet he confessed...
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- Aug 7
HELL HATH NO FURY – the poetry of women Partisans in Yugoslavia 1941 – 1945
‘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...
mwalkeristra
- Jul 16
WINTER BATTLES: BOSNIA 1941
December 1941: Fleeing the German destruction of Užice in Serbia, Tito and the Partisans crossed the River Drina in winter, climbed the...
mwalkeristra
- Jun 14
TITO'S LAST STAND
Komiža, Vis - port of the Partisan and Allied fleet September 1943 – Fascist Italy capitulates to the Allies. Nazi Germany invades the...
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- May 3
TITO’S WAR CAVE
‘Despite his experiences at Drvar, Tito had not lost his liking for caves,’ wrote Fitzroy Maclean, Churchill’s liaison officer with the...
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- Mar 6
1941 The Year That Keeps Returning by Slavko Goldstein.
I’ve always marvelled at the audacity of the Croatian priesthood pushing to canonize Aloysius Stepinac, knowing the crimes of the WW2...
mwalkeristra
- Feb 18
My First Flying Lesson OR Writing the Great Aviation Novel
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....
mwalkeristra
- Dec 18, 2022
JASENOVAC CONCENTRATION CAMP AND ISTRIA
Here is my photograph of the Partisan cenotaph in Tar, Istria, the village my mother was born in. Her family name was Mikatović. They...
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- Nov 15, 2022
ISTARSKA KUHINJA - Istrian Cuisine
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...
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- Nov 1, 2022
BOSNIA, POWER AND MOB MENTALITY
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...
mwalkeristra
- Oct 16, 2022
BOSNIA AND THE LUST FOR POWER
My father was Irish, English and German. My mother had Italian, Venetian, Slovenian and Croatian/Montenegrin grandparents. After World...
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- Sep 26, 2022
THE DARK SIDE OF THE FORCE - using dreams and visions in my novels.
Should the paranormal pay you an unexpected visit – and it will always be unexpected – try to see it as an opportunity. Frightening...
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- Sep 7, 2022
HOW TO TRANSLATE A POEM
Know your grammar. What is grammar? Grammar explains how a sentence is constructed. I started Latin when I was twelve. There was a lot of...
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- Aug 25, 2022
A PREHISTORIC CONTROVERSY IN YUGOSLAVIA – and you thought the paparazzi had no conscience.
Why had I never heard of the Vinča culture centred in Serbia and its developing writing system that predated Cuneiform by 2000 years?...
mwalkeristra
- Aug 2, 2022
THE OTHER AUSCHWITZ
TO MY FELLOW FIGHTERS by Anka Poznevija 33rd Brigade Yugoslav Partisans Comrades, my fighters, this poem testifies to you, And my heart,...
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- Jul 19, 2022
How I Met My Birth Mother, Part 2.
When I was born in Sydney in 1960, my grandfather, like many Australians his age, called Yugoslavs Balts. Even though Yugoslavia was...
mwalkeristra
- Jul 2, 2022
AUNTIE DULCIE AND THE MIKATOVIĆ MYSTERY
My husband’s Auntie Dulcie was a dedicated family historian. No one joined dots like she did. Whenever we visited her, she would proudly...
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- Jun 11, 2022
ISTRIAN COOKING IN THE 1920’s – from my birth mother’s memoirs.
Istria may have been prized by Venice, France, Italy, Austria and Yugoslavia, but it was not a wealthy region. Marcus Tanner, in his...
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