Archive for the ‘Places’ Category

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Brussels life

Published by peter on 2016-12-03 in Art and Places. 0 Comments

Exhibition of abstract expressionist art from the Peggy Guggenheim collection, ING Gallery, Brussels, Belgium.

Caning John Pilger

Published by peter on 2016-10-16 in Communism, Heroes, Philosophy of Language, Places, Post-Industrial Nomads and Recent Reading. 0 Comments

Wilfred Burchett (1911-1983) was a brave and intrepid Australian journalist who mainly reported from the other side in the Cold War. He was the first western reporter to visit Hiroshima after the atomic bomb was dropped on the city, something he did without permission from the US Occupation authorities, and was thus able to counter attempted US military lies and disinformation about what we now know was radiation poisoning; he did this most dramatically at a US military press conference in Japan immediately after his visit to the city.  For many years in the 1950s and 1960s, conservative Australian Governments unjustly refused to renew Burchett’s Australian passport, something only remedied by the incoming Labor administration of Gough Whitlam on 6 December 1972, four days after Labor’s election win. That Burchett may possibly have self-censored his writing for his Socialist Bloc hosts (or worse, been their dupe) does not diminish the wrong he suffered at the hands of petty conservative Australian governments.
Another Australian journo, John Pilger, wrote a preface to a collection on articles about Burchett, edited by Ben Kiernen in 1986. On the second page of his preface, Pilger quotes from Burchett’s autiobiography, and then commits a schoolboy howler. “Soon afterwards [Pilger writes, page x], Wilfred went ‘on the road with a swag’ and in Queensland was adopted by a group of cane-cutters . . . ”
No, Mr Pilger, no! Although Burchett is careful not to name the location of the sugarcane farm he worked on, he says (page 62) it is on an arm of the Clarence River, upstream from a sugar-mill whose chimney effusions he could smell and possibly also see, on a large island bisected by a canal with horse-drawn barges transporting bundles of cut cane. The mill would be the one at Harwood (still in operation today, thanks to former state MP, Don Day), and the island most likely Palmers Island. Other large islands upstream of the Harwood Mill would be Harwood Island itself or Chatsworth Island, but these are not bisected by canals.  But all of these, including the entire mouth of the Clarence River are in New South Wales, Mr Pilger, not Queensland.
Burchett is briefly mentioned as a social acquaintance of Guy Burgess in Moscow in the 1950s in the recent biography of Burgess by Andrew Lownie, reviewed here.
 
References:
Wilfred Burchett [1969]: Passport: An Autobiography. Melbourne, Australia: Nelson.
Ben Kiernan (Editor) [1986]: Burchett Reporting the Other Side of the World 1939-1983. London, UK: Quartet.

Central London churches

Published by peter on 2016-09-03 in Concats, Places and Religion. 0 Comments

A list of some central London churches and their denominations, updated as I visit them:

  • All Hallows by the Tower, Tower Hill / Anglican
  • All Saints Cathedral, Camden / Greek Orthodox, originally Anglican
  • Bloomsbury Central Baptist Church, Bloomsbury / Baptist
  • Chapel of King’s College London / Anglican
  • Chapel of Hospital of St John and St. Elizabeth, St John’s Wood / Roman Catholic
  • Chapel of St. Thomas’ Hospital, Lambeth / Anglican
  • Christ Church, Spitalfields / Anglican
  • Christ-the-King, Gordon Square / Catholic Apostolic
  • Corpus Christi, Maiden Lane, Covent Garden / Roman Catholic
  • St Cyprian’s Church, Clarence Gate / High Church Anglican
  • Emmanuel Temple, Westminster / Evangelical Christian
  • Finchley Quaker Meeting House / Society of Friends
  • Friends House, Euston / Society of Friends
  • St George’s, Hanover Square / Anglican
  • Holy Trinity, Marylebone / Anglican
  • Holy Trinity, Sloane Square / Anglican
  • The Little Oratory Chapel, Kensington / Roman Catholic
  • Queen’s Chapel of the Savoy / Anglican
  • St Andrew Undershaft, St Mary Axe / Anglican
  • St Anselm and St Cecilia, Holborn / Roman Catholic
  • St Bride’s, Fleet Street (the Journalists’ Church) / Anglican
  • St Clement Danes / Anglican (the home church of the RAF)
  • St Clement’s Eastcheap / Anglican
  • St Dunstan-in-the-West, Fleet Street / Anglican and Romanian Orthodox
  • St Etheldreda’s, Ely Place, Holborn / Roman Catholic
  • St Giles Cripplegate, Barbican / Anglican
  • St Giles-in-the-Fields / Anglican
  • Church of the Immaculate Conception, Farm Street, Mayfair / Jesuit, Roman Catholic
  • St James, Piccadilly / Anglican
  • St John’s, Smith Square / formerly Anglican
  • St John’s, Waterloo /Anglican
  • St John’s Wood Church / Anglican
  • St Katherine Cree, Leadenhall / Anglican
  • St Luke’s, Old Street / formerly Anglican
  • St Magnus the Martyr, Monument / Anglican
  • St Margaret, Lothbury / Anglican
  • St Margaret’s Putney / Anglican
  • St Martin, Ludgate (the Guild Church of St Martin-within-Ludgate) / Anglican
  • St Mary Abbots, Kensington / Anglican
  • St Mary Aldermary / Anglican
  • St Mary, Finchley East / Roman Catholic
  • St Marylebone, Marylebone / Anglican
  • St Mary-le-Bow / Anglican
  • St Mary-le-Strand / Anglican
  • St Mary Moorfields / Roman Catholic
  • St Mary Woolnoth / Anglican
  • St Pancras New Church, Euston / Anglican
  • St Pancras Old Church, Somers Town / Anglican
  • St Paul’s, Hammersmith / Anglican
  • St Paul’s Cathedral / Anglican
  • St Paul’s Church, Covent Garden (the Actors’ Church) / Anglican
  • St Peter’s Church on Eaton Square / Anglican
  • St Peter’s Italian Church, Holborn / Roman Catholic
  • St Sepulchre-without-Newgate / Anglican
  • St Stephen’s Church, Rosslyn Hill, Hampstead / formerly Anglican
  • St Stephen Walbrook / Anglican
  • Temple Church / Anglican
  • Wesley’s Chapel, Finsbury / Methodist
  • Westminster Cathedral / Roman Catholic
  • Westminster Quaker Meeting House / Society of Friends