On the 28th of January 1956 the Royal Albert Hall in London hosted a Festival of Judo, organised by the London Judo Society…. W/P Sgt Mary Hobbs looks like a copper not to cross!
Two women police officers in London, probably at the time when the uniform style was changing. On the left is Sergeant Mary Hobbs wearing the old style rounded hat, and on the right is Constable Nora Merideth in the new style peaked cap.
Eric Dominy (1918-1992) was a founding member of the London Judo Society and wrote several books on martial arts. Then Corporal George Chew was apparenlty a founder of the RAF Judo Club or Kübukwai was founded in 1941 in Blackpool.
Empress Dowager Cixi (1835–1908), who ruled China from 1861 until her death in 1908, is a subject of fascination and controversy, at turns vilified for her political maneuvering and admired for modernizing China. In addition to being an astute politician, she was an earnest art patron, and this beautifully illustrated book explores a wide range of objects, revealing how the empress dowager used art and architecture to solidify her rule.
Cixi’s art commissions were innovative in the way that they unified two distant conceptions of gender in China at the time, demonstrating her strength and wisdom as a monarch while highlighting her identity as a woman and mother. Artful Subversion examines commissioned works, including portrait paintings and photographs, ceramics, fashion, architecture, and garden design, as well as work Cixi created, such as painting and calligraphy. The book is a compelling study of how a powerful matriarch at once subverted and upheld the Qing imperial patriarchy.
A video from the Royal Asiatic Society China of my talk on the launch of the China Revisited Series (from Blacksmith Books and avalable here) and a discussion with historian Jeremiah Jenne on rediscovering “lost” travel writing on China…click here to watch
China Revisited – Recovering Lost Travel Writing
China Revisited is a new series of rediscovered travel writing on China from the Victorian, Edwardian, and Interwar periods from local independent publisher Blacksmith Books. Each book is abridged, introduced and annotated by historian and author Paul French. The series aims to “recover” largely forgotten and invariably dismissed works that often perpetuate the cliches and stereotypes of their authors and times. Yet often the writing reveals moments in China’s history, providing snapshots of a country now forever changed. And problematic as these texts can be they do show us the terms of engagement and preoccupations of both westerners and Chinese in the nineteenth and first half of the twentieth centuries. This presentation looks at the first three books in the series and asks how we can best appreciate and understand these historic works through the lens of the second decade of the twenty-first century.
