Trumbolosophy

I wrote the following piece while I was teaching alongside Keith Wrightson in the Yale-in-London program during the summer of 2007, and it was the first of my review articles to be accepted by the late Holly Eley for publication in The Times Literary Supplement . They even gave me the cover illustration: a large, lurid flea. It was also the very first piece I wrote following a sobering, indeed unforgettable medical emergency that took place early on one bright frigid morning the previous February. It seems perfectly obvious now why the subject so intrigued me, but I am not sure it was so clear at the time. Nothing at all was. The best horror stories are real. A flea sinks its proboscis into the skin of a sick black rat, feeds on its blood, and ingests lethally multiplying bacteria. In the confined space of its tiny alimentary canal, the bacteria multiply to such an extent that they form a blockage in the stomach of the flea. In desperation, after it senses a drop in the body temperat...

Where do we draw a line between the personal and the historical? Although she died in Melbourne in 1975, when I was not quite eleven years old, I have the vividest memories of my maternal grandmother Helen Borthwick. Mrs Borthwick was the eldest daughter of the Hon. William Pearson, MLC, who represented the Province of Gippsland in the upper house of the Victorian Parliament through the years at either side of Federation, and was a member of the powerful Joint Committee on Defence. The highlight of the Pearsons’ extended visit to England, commencing towards the end of 1912, was when Lady Reid, the wife of the Australian High Commissioner, Sir George H. Reid, sometime fourth Prime Minister of the Commonwealth, 1904–05, presented Great-Grandmother Sophie Pearson to the King and Queen at an evening court at Buckingham Palace, and Mrs. Pearson in turn presented her daughters. Here is the exquisite photograph that was taken by Speaight Limited, Photographers & Portrait Painte...