My beautiful Anglo-Bengali great great grandmother, Sophia Pattle. She had quite a life: born in Chandernagar, educated in Versailles and married in Calcutta, she brought up her children in Little Holland House in Kensington, then a village outside London.
In Little Holland House she lived with her sister, Sarah, Sarah's husband Henry Prinsep, a Sanskritist who opposed Macaulay's Anglicising reforms & wrote the first English-language history of the Sikhs.
Also living in Little Holland House was the painter GM Watts, then known as 'England's Michelangelo' who came to lunch and stayed for 35 years.
Another of her sisters was the pioneering photographer, Julia Margaret Cameron, who used Little Holland House as an open air studio
In Little Holland House Julia would dress up Alfred Lord Tennyson and Cardinal Vaughan as King Arthur and Lancelot, and make them sit still for her 15 minute exposures.
Sophia was a muse not just to Watts, who painted her often, but also to Burne-Jones, who fell in apparently unrequited love with her, and also Rossetti.
She moved briefly to Scotland with her husband, but found it too cold and on his early death moved to Monte Carlo
1,2,3, 6&7 by Watts
In her old age in Monte Carlo she played Spanish guitar and entertained her great niece, Virginia Woolf.
Don't miss this week's @EmpirePodUK Partition double bill:
The Creation of Pakistan... and
Why India was Split in Two
Part One: Jinnah, Ruttie & the Idea of Pakistan
How come Jinnah was originally know as the Ambassador of Hindu-Muslim unity? Why did he initially accept that Pakistan could be part of an Indian Federation? When did Jinnah start to push for Pakistan to be independent from India? What was Direct Action Day in 1946, and how did it start the violence of Partition? share.google/rpyzvoT4QBpSIP…
Dividing India:
Why was the Partition of India and Pakistan so rushed in 1947? How did Partition divide everything from stationery to army boots in a matter of weeks? And how do South Asians today grapple with the memory of the largest forced migration in history? share.google/EnKs7GPSdhElv6…
When the Macedonian soldiers of Alexander the Great first broke into Gaza after the siege of 332BCE, they recorded what they saw and left the first eyewitness account of Gaza that survives....
They recorded the vast stores of incense and spices which the merchants of Gaza had brought overland by camel caravan from southern Arabia.
When he was a boy, Alexander had been ticked off by his tutor Leonidas for scooping up handfuls of precious frankincense to burn on the altar as offerings to the Gods. Leonidas had clucked reprovingly, “Alexander when you have conquered the lands which produce these aromatics, then you can scatter incense in this extravagant manner. Until then, don't waste it.” Now Alexander sent to the elderly Leonidas a gift of 500 talents (13.7 tonnes) of frankincense and 100 talents of myrrh, with the message, “I have sent you frankincense and myrrh in abundance , to stop you being stingy to the Gods.”
Not Gaza 2025, but Jaffa 1948, after the Nakba
#ThisDidntBeginonOct7 #HistoryRepeating
The Manshiya quarter of Jaffa was destroyed in a series of bombardments led by the Irgun during the 1948 Nakba in order to drive out its Palestinians inhabitants
The history of Gaza is full of surprises: I had no idea it was home to a Christian Byzantine school of rhetoric, "an important library that could compete with Athens, Alexandria, Beirut and Constantinople" and also an Festival of Roses that celebrated "the arrival of Spring and the workings of Eros" at which poetry was read- in other words a sort of erotic Gaza Litfest.
The Church of St. Porphyrius, which was first built in 425 AD, is the last survivor from this world. It still, just, survives though the Israelis shelled its outbuildings last year. 450 Palestinians, mainly Palestinian Christians, were sheltering there. Eighteen were killed.
And as @GhassanDahhan has just pointed out to me, Polybius in about 120BCE commends the people of Gaza for their bravery in the face of external aggression: penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman…
The caves were carved with clear Gupta influence in the 5th-6thC, probably under the patronage of the Vakataka or Kalachuri dynasty; but not one inscription has ever been found which can solve the conundrum of who commissioned these fabulous master works.
1. Eight armed Shiva Nataraja, in the graceful Lalitha pose, embodying the eternal energy of creation which shapes and gives birth to the universe.
2. The Eternal Shiva- Sadashiva
Of the five faces of Shiva, three are visible:
On the left, Aghora/Bhairavi, the fierce and terrifying aspect of Shiva.
On the right, Vamadeva/Uma, the beautiful, feminine and pleasing aspect of Shiva.
In the centre, Mahadeva/Tatpurusha, the fusion of male and female, locked in meditation, eyelids lowered, lips closed, the embodiment of absolute knowledge.
3. Adhikari Shiva- Shiva in the act of skewering the demon Andhakasura, who had desired the beautiful Parvati and tried to abduct her. Not a good move. Despite having been given a boon by Brahma that any drop of his blood that touched the ground would grow a new demon, Shiva made short work of him by collecting his blood in a skull-cup and feeding it to the blood thirsty goddess Chamunda. But Andhaka realised the error of his ways, praised Lord Shiva and was forgiven. Eventually he was made the Chief Commander of the Shiva's dwarf armies, the Ganas.