This vivid memoir by well-known New Zealand actor and novelist Barbara Ewing covers her tumultuous childhood, adolescence, and young-adulthood in Wellington and Auckland in the 1950s and early 1960s—a very different time—and ends in 1962, when she boards a ship for London to study at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. It draws heavily on the diaries she kept from the age of twelve, which lead her to some surprising conclusions about memory and truth. Ewing struggled with what would now be diagnosed as anxiety; she had a difficult relationship with her brilliant but frustrated and angry mother, and her decision to somehow learn Maori drew her into a world to which few Pakeha had access. A love affair with a young Maori man destined for greatness was complicated by society's unease about such relationships, and changed them both. Evocative, candid, brave, bright, and darting, this entrancing book takes us to a long-ago New Zealand and to enduring truths about love.
They all met again at the Drama School Reunion: the Hollywood celebrity, the out-of-work soap star, the understudy, the Shakespearian hero. Thirty-six years ago, they dreamed of the great parts awaiting them. What they did not know was that the parts would soon dry up, for the actresses. Because they had stopped being young. But: once an actress, always an actress and on this hot, summer's day it becomes clear that age does not wipe out ambition. Or desire. Or memory. Or love. So when the Reunion culminates in an accusation of rape that dominates every newspaper in the country, the past – sweet, cruel, tragic – comes flooding back, and the actresses become the stars of the story. Perceptive, shocking, gripping and wise, this could only have been written by somebody who has been there.
1765. Filipo di Vecellio of Florence, portrait painter, is the toast of London: rich, successful, and married to Angelica, known as the most beautiful woman in the city. Their Pall Mall home is the hub of the art world; their impressive social gatherings run so smoothly by Filipo's silent sister, Francesca. But beneath the surface, the house conceals a swarm of dangerous secrets. Where does Francesca di Vecellio go as the sun sets over Covent Garden? And why are there always candles lit in her attic, while no candles burn for her brother's exquisite wife? Within the bustling artistic lives of the di Vecellios hides corruption and lies; love and tragedy. And wild ambition unbalances the capital's art world as, finally, a wonderful portrait battles for the right to paint the truth . . .
New York, late 1840s, and in the wild, noisy, brash and beautiful circus of Silas P. Swift a shadowy, mesmeric woman entrances crowds because she can unlock the secrets of troubled minds. Above them all her daughter sweeps and soars: acrobat and tightrope-walker. People cannot take their eyes from the mysterious woman in the Big Top who can help so many others - but she cannot unlock dark, literally unspeakable, memories of her own. In London memories fester in the mind of an old and venomous duke of the realm. He plots, with an unscrupulous lawyer (and a huge financial reward) against the mother and the daughter: to kill one, and to abduct the other and bring her across the Atlantic to him: She is mine. The actress and mesmerist Cordelia Preston and her daughter Gwenlliam live with their unusual family in the exciting new city among exciting new ideas: the telegraph, the daguerrotype, anaesthesia, table-tapping. And among the dangerous street-gangs of New York also, whose raw violence meets Cordelia and Gwenlliam and those that they love, with unexpected results.
No one suspects murder when astronaut Pete O'Kelley dies a hit-run accident—until his widow, Marlow, learns he had deposited a quarter of a million bucks in a bank account and spent it all in four months. Then Pete's executor, a NASA administrator, is found dead on a picnic table at the Johnson Space Center, a meat cleaver planted in his back. Not wanting to tell anyone about the money, but knowing the deaths are connected, Marlow turns sleuth to track down a bold killer who leaves no clues. Despite painful revelations, she must dig out the truth about her brief, turbulent marriage and about Pete's death. In this first of a mystery series, Marlow O'Kelley, an irreverent structural engineer who renovates homes for rich Texans, battles police and NASA poobahs as she untangles the intrigue surrounding the players who would kill to win a multimillion-dollar government contract. Fast paced and tightly plotted, Till Murder Do Us Part is a riveting, brain-teasing murder mystery.
London 1849. The capital city is living in fear. Cholera is everywhere. Eminent MP Sir Charles Cooper decides it is too risky for his younger daughter, the strangely beautiful and troubled Harriet, and sends her--but not her beloved sister Mary--to the countryside. Rusholme is a world away from London, full of extraordinary relations: Harriet's cousin Edward and his plans for a new life in New Zealand; Aunt Lucretia, reliant on afternoon wine and laudanum; the formidable Lady Kingdom and her two eligible, unobtainable sons. However, life in the country can offer only temporary respite to Harriet, who longs to return to her sister. But when Harriet does come home, London has become more dangerous than ever. Her health, her freedom--even her sanity--are under threat. Escape is essential. Can a young, powerless girl change her life? Can she board the Amaryllis without being discovered? Does she realize that if she flees, more than one person will pursue her, literally to the end of the world? Barbara Ewing's The Trespass is historical fiction at its most gripping, stretching from the dark side of Victorian London to the optimism and energy of the early New Zealand settlements.
The Victorian gossipmongers called them The Petticoat Men. But to young Mattie Stacey they are Freddie and Ernest, her gentlemen lodgers. She doesn't care that they dress up in sparkling gowns to attend society balls as 'Fanny and Stella'. She only cares that they are kind to her, make her laugh, and pay their rent on time. Then one fateful night, Fanny and Stella are arrested, and Mattie – outraged but staunch – is dragged into a shocking court trial, hailed in newspapers all over England as 'The Scandal of the Century'.
London, 1838: the controversial practice of Mesmerism, with its genuine practitioners and its fraudulent chancers, has hypnotised the city. Miss Cordelia Preston, a beautiful, ageing, out-of-work actress terrified of returning to the poverty of her childhood, suddenly emerges as a Lady Phreno-Mesmerist. In her candle-lit Bloomsbury basement she learns to harness her talent - and to finally look towards the future. But success is fragile when you have a past filled with secrets. On a wintry, moonlit night a body is found in Bloomsbury Square, and what began as an audacious subterfuge erupts into a scandal. Cordelia's past is revealed, bringing not only heartache but terror - and the mystery of a cloaked figure who waits for her in the shadowy London streets.
Margaret Rose Bennett, like her elder sister, Elizabeth, was named after the two English princesses. But Elizabeth is dead, and Margaret Rose still living, searching and reaching out for life and its meaning. And against the frankly odd, strained and curiously English household she inhabits in a New Zealand city, it is hard to make out the truth. So Margaret abandons what her parents think is right: learning English history, the French language, listening to comedy shows on the World Service and returning home on the 9.30 tram and maps out a course of her own. She studies Maori at University, makes friends with the wayward Emily (daughter of the soon to be Prime Minister of New Zealand) and shy, independent Prudence. As a trio they study hard for their degrees, work by day at the local Government offices and by night sing, drink and laugh with the local Maori people - and fall in love. A new world, an enchanting world, and one with an underbelly of struggle, colour, passion and even violence. Far removed from the closed, ordered life of Margaret Rose's family, but perhaps not so detached from their own, secret history... Here is an extraordinary, poetic novel of a society trapped in a time of its own, undercut by a people that live and breathe with a vigour that bubbles and burst through the silent surface.
As a child, Rosetta is fascinated by words and loves being told stories. She thinks she is named after Princess Rosetta of the fairytales. But when she finds that it is a small port town in Egypt that gave her her name, her interest in hieroglyphics is born. Years later, when Rose is an older, wiser and sadder woman, it is her love of language that saves her life. The French Revolution; the rise of the power of the English church; the battles for Egypt between the British and the French; the discovery of the hieroglyphs on the Rosetta Stone in that same small port all combine to carry Rose into France and a shared moment with Napoleon Bonaparte, and into the dark, unknown world of North Africa in her search to understand the meaning of words...
A collection of one-liners and humorous observations about the male species in which authors Ewing and Sude zero in on dating disasters and romantic mishaps.
Londen 1795: de jonge Rosetta Hall raakt door de verhalen van haar vader gefascineerd door Egypte. Ze droomt ervan zelf naar Egypte te gaan om hiërogliefen te ontcijferen. Die droom schuift naar de achtergrond als ze met de extravagante Henry Vallon trouwt en de bibliotheek verruilt voor de balzaal. Haar decadente levensstijl is echter van korte duur: Harry vindt de dood in de strijd tegen de Fransen in Egypte. Dan ontmoet ze een egyptoloog die haar niet alleen een aantal bijzondere Egyptische schatten laat zien, maar haar ook aan het twijfelen brengt over de oorzaak van Harry' s dood. Ze is vastbesloten om ondanks alle gevaren naar Egypte te reizen om de ware toedracht van zijn dood te ontdekken. Donkere Rosetta neemt de lezer mee van Londen naar Parijs en Egypte.Het vertelt het verhaal van een eigenzinnige vrouw die zich verzet tegen de beperkingen die de samenleving haar oplegt, terwijl diezelfde samenleving op haar fundamenten schudt door de Franse Revolutie en de napoleontische oorlogen.
Polaroid instant photography revolutionized the taking and making of pictures, and the story of its beginnings is a simple one. In 1943, after being asked by his daughter why she couldn't immediately see the photograph he had just taken, American inventor and scientist Edwin H. Land conceived of the technology required to make this seemingly impossible demand a reality--within an hour. Land's creation was a groundbreaking scientific accomplishment that also heralded an exciting new chapter of artistic expression. Through the efforts of thousands of photographers the world over, as well as the corporation's own artist support program, which provided many with materials, Polaroid would help shape the artistic landscape of the late twentieth century. Published to accompany a major traveling exhibition, The Polaroid Project is a creative exploration of the relationship between Polaroid's many technological innovations and the art that was created with their help. Richly designed with over 300 illustrations, this impressive volume showcases not only the myriad and often idiosyncratic approaches taken by such photographers as Ansel Adams, Robert Mapplethorpe, Ellen Carey, and Chuck Close, but also a fascinating selection of the technical objects and artifacts that speak to the sheer ingenuity that lay behind the art. With essays by the exhibition's curators and leading photographic writers and historians, The Polaroid Project provides a unique perspective on the Polaroid phenomenon--a technology, an art form, a convergence of both--and its enduring cultural legacy. Contributors: William A. Ewing, Barbara P. Hitchcock, Deborah G. Douglas, Gary Van Zante, Rebekka Reuter, Christopher Bonanos, Todd Brandow, Peter Buse, Dennis Jelonnek, and John Rohrbach. Exhibition dates: Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth: June 3-September 3, 2017 WestLicht Museum of Photography, Vienna: December 5, 2017-March 4, 2018 C/O Berlin: March 16�-May 27, 2018 MIT Museum, Cambridge, MA: early 2019
These writings have evolved properly over living many years on the planet and enjoying observations of my fellow man. It's about learning how to flow within the rhythm of all “LIFE FORMS” and laughing about silly things incredulous human beings do. It’s about loving the human race, and living everywhere on the planet at one time; it’s about you! Note: There is no intention on my part to be cogent as these writings have come about from a knowing heart! Upon using the words man and he, I am referring to the Homo Sapien species which include both male/female gender as we know it at the time of these writings.
This selection of writings by twenty-nine women, known and unknown, professional and amateur, presents a unique portrait of Canada through time and space, from the seventeenth to the early twentieth centuries, from the Maritimes to British Columbia and the Far North. There is a range of voices from high-born wives of governors general, to an Icelandic immigrant and a fisherman’s wife in Labrador. A Loyalist wife and mother describes the first hard weather in New Brunswick, a seasick nun tells of a dangerous voyage out from France, a famous children’s writer writes home about the fun of canoeing, and a German general’s wife describes habitant customs. All demonstrate how women’s experiences not only shared, but helped shape this new country.
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