Jan Kemp: Dancing Heart (2025)

Design: John Denny

Jan Kemp. Dancing Heart: New and Selected Poems 1968–2024. Edited by Jack Ross. ISBN 978-3-00-083163-8. Kronberg im Taunus, Germany: Tranzlit, 2025. 172 pp.

I've just this morning received my co-author's copies of this, Jan Kemp's latest collection - a selection I made last year from her poetry to date. And here we both are on the back cover: snapped at an unguarded moment in the Senior Common Room of Auckland Uni during Jan's latest visit to New Zealand.

Jan Kemp: Dancing Heart (2025)

Blurb:

Jan Kemp MNZM & Dr Jack Ross first worked together 20 years ago creating the Aotearoa NZ Poetry Sound Archive (2004). Since then Jan has published three poetry collections, Dante’s Heaven (Puriri Press, 2007) which became Dante Down Under (English/German) (2017), and Black Ice & the Love Planet (English/German) (2020), both from Tranzlit & Tripstones (Puriri Press, 2020), as well as the two memoirs Raiment (Massey University Press, 2022) and To see a World (Tranzlit, 2023). She lives with her husband Dieter Riemenschneider in Kronberg im Taunus, Germany, where she sings in a choir, presents poetry & music performances and walks in its parks.

Jack, too, has published three poetry collections since 2004: To Terezín (Massey University, 2007); A Clearer View of the Hinterland: Poems & Sequences 1981-2014 (HeadworX, 2014), and The Oceanic Feeling (Salt & Greyboy Press, 2020); as well as Celanie (Pania Press, 2012), a collaboration with artist Emma Smith, which includes a translation of Paul Celan’s poems to his wife Gisèle Celan-Lestrange. He was also managing editor of Poetry NZ (now Poetry Aotearoa) from 2014 to 2020. He lives in Mairangi Bay, on Auckland’s North Shore, with his wife, crafter, curator and art-writer Bronwyn Lloyd.

None of that tells you very much about the book itself, though. I've written some comments on Jan's previous collection, Tripstones, here. That, too, was a selection from already published poems, but it was meant as a short, limited-edition sampler from her longtime publisher Puriri Press rather than a genuine attempt to do justice to the scope and scale of her work to date.

Jan's nine poetry collections to date contain, by my estimate, 355 poems, composed over a period of roughly fifty years. All of them could all be fitted in one book, I suppose, but it would have to be a pretty massive tome. We therefore decided, when discussing the idea of a collected / selected edition of her poetry, to compromise on presenting a set of new, unpublished poems alongside a selection from her earlier books.

As I say in my introduction to Dancing Heart:

Each one of these books is a thing of beauty. They speak to the typefaces and design features of a particular epoch: the ampersands and back-slashes of the 1970s, the florid exuberance of the early 2000s.

Here's a gallery of covers to make the point:

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Jan Kemp: Against the Softness of Woman (1976)

Jan Kemp: Diamonds and Gravel (1979)

Jan Kemp: The Other Hemisphere (1991)

Jan Kemp: The Sky’s Enormous Jug (2001)

Jan Kemp: Only One Angel (2001)

Jan Kemp: Dante’s Heaven (2006)

Jan Kemp: Voicetracks (2012)

Jan Kemp: Tripstones (2020)

Jan Kemp: Black ice & the love planet (2020)


•

As I go on to say in my introduction:

I suppose if I had to play favourites, it would have to be for the meticulously designed and produced volumes created by John Denny at the Puriri Press in Auckland. The Sky’s Enormous Jug, with its delicate hand-binding and sumptuous illustrations, is a particular pleasure to leaf through. Dante’s Heaven, too, is a wonderful piece of book-art.

I'm very happy to report that John Denny has come out of retirement to design this new collection as a special favour to Jan.

What else? If you'd like to preview the table of contents and find out more information about the book, please go here. If you'd like to read my introduction in full, you can go here. There's a sample poem, "Christmas Lily", available here at Newsroom.

And if you're interested in ordering a copy, this is the address to write to:

Available:

Tranzlit
Bahnhofstrasse 16a
61476 Kronberg im Taunus
Germany
www.tranzlit.de
E: jantranzlit@gmail.com

RRP: $NZ35 [incl. postage & packing]

I hope you'll have as much fun reading the book as we did in putting it together. It involved digitising, collating, and selecting from all of Jan's books - a task we've both had to work hard on over the past year - but it was definitely worth it. As I say in my introduction:

As I look at my set of her books to date, including all nine of her poetry collections, published between 1976 and 2020, they seem like a time capsule of New Zealand writing over the past five decades.

In the end, though:

if it’s to live, your work does have to end up belonging to others.
Jan has understood this, and her lifetime of poetry writing, reading, performing and teaching has – in my view at least – resulted in a truly wonderful body of work, which I believe richly deserves to catch fire in the minds of new readers as well as the memories of already established fans.

Jan Kemp: Raiment: A Memoir (2022)

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Jan Kemp (2012)

Janet Mary Riemenschneider-Kemp MNZM
(1949- )

Books I own are marked in bold:

Poetry collections:


1. Against the Softness of Woman (1976)
   • Against the Softness of Woman. Dunedin: Caveman Press, 1976.
2. Diamonds and Gravel (1979)
   • Diamonds and Gravel. Wellington: Hampson Hunt, 1979.
3. The Other Hemisphere (1991)
   • The Other Hemisphere. 1991. Washington, DC: Three Continents Press, 1992.
4. The Sky’s Enormous Jug – love poems old and new (2001)
   • The Sky’s Enormous Jug – love poems old and new. Auckland: Puriri Press, 2001.
5. Only One Angel (2001)
   • Only One Angel. Dunedin: University of Otago Press, 2001.
6. Dante’s Heaven (2006)
   • Dante’s Heaven. Auckland: Puriri Press, 2006.
   • Dante Down Under / Gedichte aus Aotearoa/Neuseeland. 2006. Trans. Dieter Riemenschneider. Kronberg im Taunus: Tranzlit, 2017.
   • Dante's Heaven / Il Cielo di Dante. 2006. Trans. Aldo Magagnino. Poggio Imperiale: Edizioni del Poggio, 2017.
7. Voicetracks: Poems 2002-2012 (2012)
   • Voicetracks: Poems 2002-2012. Auckland: Puriri Press / Kronberg im Taunus: Tranzlit, 2012.
8. Tripstones: A Selection of Poems (2020)
   • Tripstones: A Selection of Poems. Auckland: Puriri Press, 2020.
9. Black Ice & the Love Planet (2020)
   • Black Ice & the Love Planet: Poems 2012-2019 / Glatteis & der Planet der Liebe: Gedichte 2012-2019. Trans. Susanne Opfermann & Helmbrecht Breinig. Kronberg im Taunus: Tranzlit, 2020.
   • Black Ice & the Love Planet: Poems 2012-2019 / Ghiaccio Nero & il Pianeta dell'Amore: Poesie 2012-2019. Trans. Aldo Magagnino. Poggio Imperiale: Edizioni del Poggio, 2021.
10. Dancing Heart: New and Selected Poems. Ed. Jack Ross (2025)
    • Dancing Heart: New and Selected Poems 1968–2024. Edited by Jack Ross. ISBN 978-3-00-083163-8. Kronberg im Taunus, Germany: Tranzlit, 2025.

Chapbooks & Features:


11. [Contributor] The Young New Zealand Poets. Ed. Arthur Baysting. Auckland: Heinemann Educational Books, 1973.
12. [Contributor] Private Gardens: An Anthology of New Zealand Women Poets. Ed. Riemke Ensing. Afterword by Vincent O'Sullivan. Dunedin: Caveman Publications Ltd., 1977.
13. [Featured Poet] Climate 29: A Journal of New Zealand and Australian Writing (Autumn 1979). Ed. Alistair Paterson. Auckland, 1979.
14. Ice Breaker Poems. Drawings by Anthony Stones. Auckland: Coal-Black Press, 1980.
15. Five Poems. Singapore: National Museum Art Gallery, 1988.
16. Nine Poems from Le Château de Lavigny. Auckland: Puriri Press, 2007.
17. Jennet's poem: wild love. Auckland: Puriri Press, 2012.
18. [Featured Poet] Poetry NZ 48 (2014). Ed. Nicholas Reid. Auckland: Puriri Press / Palm Springs, California: Brick Row, March 2014.

Prose:


19. Spirals of Breath: Short Stories & Novellas. Kronberg im Taunus: Tranzlit, 2020.
20. Raiment. Memoirs, 1. Auckland: Massey University Press, 2022.
21. To See a World. Memoirs, 2. Kronberg im Taunus: Tranzlit, 2024.

Edited:


22. [with Jonathan Lamb & Alan Smythe] New Zealand Poets Read Their Work. 3 LPs. Auckland: Waiata Records, 1974.
23. [with Jack Ross] Classic New Zealand Poets in Performance [with 2 CDs]. Auckland: Auckland University Press, 2006.
24. [with Jack Ross] Contemporary NZ Poets in Performance [with 2 CDs]. Auckland: Auckland University Press,, 2007.
25. [with Jack Ross] New New Zealand Poets in Performance [with 2 CDs]. Auckland: Auckland University Press, 2008).
26. [with Dieter Riemenschneider] Wildes Licht: Poems / Gedichte aus Aotearoa Neuseeland (English-German). Kronberg: Tranzlit, 2010.

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Jan Kemp: To See a World: A Memoir (2024)

Euhemerism

Tim Severin: The Jason Voyage (1985)

Tim Severin. The Jason Voyage: The Quest for the Golden Fleece. Drawings by Tróndur Patursson. Photographs by John Egan, Seth Mortimer and Tom Skudra. Hutchinson. London: Century Hutchinson Ltd., 1985.

The other day I picked up a rather handsome secondhand copy of Tim Severin's book The Jason Voyage for a trifling sum. I wasn't actually planning on reading it right away, but somehow it grabbed my attention and diverted me from all the other odds and ends - biographies, short story collections, graphic novels - I'm working my way through at the moment.

I remember seeing a documentary about the making of Severin's replica twenty-oar Bronze Age galley the Argo some years ago, and it was interesting to compare that to the rather more contextual approach to the myth he takes here.

Apollonius of Rhodes: Argonautica (2014)

Apollonius of Rhodes. The Voyage of Argo. Trans. E. V. Rieu. 1959. Rev. ed. 1972. Introduction by Lawrence Norfolk. Illustrations by Daniel Egnéus. London: The Folio Society, 2014.

After a while I thought I should check on the critical response to some of Severin's more audacious claims about the original voyage of the Argonauts, and found the following review on the Goodreads site, contributed by a certain Koen Crolla (29/10/2020):

... Tim Severin spent much of the '70s and '80s and other people's money recreating some historic boat journeys; in this case, that of Jason and the Argonauts, from Iolcus (now Volos in Greece) to Colchis (now Georgia)...
The book covers everything from the construction of the replica Argo in Greece to their successful arrival in Poti, (Soviet) Georgia, and, in the epilogue, their engine-powered return, but Severin is neither a classicist nor an archaeologist, so many of the more interesting detail [sic.] are skipped over: you'll find plenty of anecdotes illustrating the boat-builder's personality, for example, but few details regarding the construction of the ship itself, and none at all regarding the archaeological basis of the design.
During the journey itself, too, Severin's thoughts on the Argonautica range far beyond what conscientious euhemerism will actually allow, with every coincidence becoming a confirmation of the definite historical fact of Jason and everything he encounters. It doesn't help that Severin's knowledge of Bronze Age Greece is rudimentary at best and tainted by Gimbutasian nonsense ... but some of the blame surely falls on two archaeologists (Vasiliki Adrimi in Greece and Othar Lordkipanidze in (Soviet) Georgia) for filling this gullible oaf's head with nonsense.
Still, things are such that even dodgy experimental archaeology often yields useful results, and if you ignore everything Severin writes about landmarks that are definitely 100% the locations mentioned in the Argonautica, there's still actual information left about the feasibility of crossing the open sea and rough currents in a crappy galley, even with doughy and/or middle-aged rowers — even if Severin is enough of a narcissist that large swathes of his account are clearly unreliable. (At least National Geographic took a lot of pictures.)
And though the write-up is kind of a lost opportunity, it's still decent entertainment; I would have liked to have been one of the crew.

Tim Severin: Rowers in the Bosphorus (1985)

How surprising that they didn't think to invite Mr. (or is it Dr?) Crolla to accompany them! His lively good humour would have left the whole crew in stitches, I'm sure - especially that little side-swipe at the "doughy and/or middle-aged rowers" Severin enlisted to help him. Not according to the photos he included of their sinewy bodies toiling at the oars - talk about "sitting well in order smite / The sounding furrows" (Tennyson, "Ulysses") ...

There were a couple of other points of interest in Koen Crolla's review, though. First of all, there was that intriguing word "euhemerism," which I must confess was new to me. Not any more, though:

Euhemerus of Sicily (fl. 4th century BCE)

Euhemerism:

is an approach to the interpretation of mythology in which mythological accounts are presumed to have originated from real historical events or personages. Euhemerism supposes that historical accounts become myths as they are exaggerated in the retelling, accumulating elaborations and alterations that reflect cultural mores. It was named after the Greek mythographer Euhemerus ... In the more recent literature of myth ... euhemerism is termed the "historical theory" of mythology.

Tim Severin: The Jason Voyage (map)

Well, there you go. You learn something new every day. That really is a perfect description of Severin's diegetic method. Nary a rock or a headland can be glimpsed without his pointing out how perfectly it matches Apollonius's description in the Argonautica: an epic poem composed in the 3rd century BCE, roughly a thousand years after the actual events of the original voyage are supposed to have taken place.

I was also intrigued by Crolla's side-reference to "Gimbutasian nonsense." Again, this was not an adjective familiar to me, but I presume it refers to Marija Gimbutas:

a Lithuanian archaeologist and anthropologist known for her research into the Neolithic and Bronze Age cultures of "Old Europe" and for her Kurgan hypothesis, which located the Proto-Indo-European homeland in the Pontic Steppe.

Marija Gimbutienė: Lithuanian postage stamp (2021)

The "Kurgan hypothesis" turns out, on investigation, to be a fairly well-regarded theory about the origins of the proto-Indo-European (or "Aryan", as they used to be called) languages in an area north of the Black Sea. What I think Crollas must be referring to, though, is her later work:

Gimbutas gained fame and notoriety in the English-speaking world with her last three English-language books: The Goddesses and Gods of Old Europe (1974); The Language of the Goddess (1989) ... and the last of the three, The Civilization of the Goddess (1991), which, based on her documented archaeological findings, presented an overview of her conclusions about Neolithic cultures across Europe: housing patterns, social structure, art, religion, and the nature of literacy.
The Goddess trilogy articulated what Gimbutas saw as the differences between the Old European system, which she considered goddess- and woman-centered (gynocentric), and the Bronze Age Indo-European patriarchal ("androcratic") culture which supplanted it. According to her interpretations, gynocentric (or matristic) societies were peaceful, honored women, and espoused economic equality. The androcratic, or male-dominated, Kurgan peoples, on the other hand, invaded Europe and imposed upon its natives the hierarchical rule of male warriors.

Aha! The penny drops. I'm certainly familiar with all the ideological battles over whether or not there ever was an ancient, peaceful woman-centred culture in Europe which was supplanted by the incursion of violent, male-dominated, warrior tribes. Once again, one point up to Crolla, though his reference to Severin as a "gullible oaf" still seems a little uncalled for.

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Tim Severin: The Ulysses Voyage (1987)

Tim Severin. The Ulysses Voyage: Sea Search for the Odyssey. Drawings by Will Stoney. Photographs by Kevin Fleming, with Nazem Choufeh and Rick Williams. Hutchinson. London: Century Hutchinson Ltd., 1987.

It isn't really the voyage of the Argonauts that's the problem, though. It's the Odyssey.

After rowing his painstakingly constructed galley through the Aegean and across into the Black Sea to reenact the Argonautica, the second part of Severin's master-plan clicked into action. Now he would attempt to sail the same boat from Troy, on the coast of Asia Minor, to the island of Ithaka, in order to chart the much-vexed Odysseus's difficult ten-year journey home.

Here's one of the standard interpretations of this voyage:

The Route of Odysseus

And here's Tim Severin's own route from Troy all the way to the Ionian sea, as navigated (for the most part) by his own Trojan-war-era galley:

Tim Severin: The Ulysses Voyage (map 1)

And here's an overview of his blueprint for the entire voyage:

Tim Severin: The Ulysses Voyage (map 2)

Both versions agree on a side-trip to North Africa, and a long haul back from there. The difference, however, is that the earlier version has Odysseus's 12-ship flotilla blown all the way down the coast to Tunisia, whereas Severin calculates that the ships must have battened down and furled their sails and thus made landfall far further east, in Libya.

Severin therefore postulates a much shorter trip back to Greece, followed by some cruising around the island of Crete, whereas the other theory has Odysseus landing in Sicily, followed by excursions to the Balearic islands - possibly even as far as the Pillars of Hercules!

Odysseus consulting the shade of Tiresias

Which of these two routes sounds more plausible to you: the one Severin actually sailed in his own boat, or the one dreamed up by desk-bound scholars measuring distances on the map?

Here are a few of the problems I foresee arising from any attempt to answer this question:

1. It presupposes that there was once a person called Odysseus / Ulysses
2. It assumes that he took part in the Trojan War
3. And also that there was an actual, historical "Trojan war"
4. It also takes for granted that legitimate, topographically precise details of his journey home can be gleaned from the Odyssey, a poem probably written around the 8th or 7th century BCE, about a war which took place at least 4-500 years earlier, around the 12th or 13th century BCE
5. There are further assumptions built into it about the poet we refer to as "Homer", who may (or may not) have been the "author" - whatever precisely we mean by that, in a predominantly oral Bardic culture - of both the Odyssey as well as the Iliad
6. And isn't it just a little bit problematic that the one fact all accounts of Homer agree on is that he was blind? Could he really have been the keen yachtsman and ocean swimmer postulated at certain points in Severin's narrative?

Do I need to go on? Without wanting to be a spoilsport about it, I feel that we need at least a few plausible answers to the questions above before we start debating if an obscure Cretan folktale about three-eyed cannibals may have given rise to the story of the Cyclops, or whether or not the Straits of Messina are too wide to have been the abode of Scylla and Charybdis.

Robert Graves: Homer's Daughter (1955)

Such speculations can be a lot of fun, mind you. I'm a big fan of Robert Graves' historical novels, one of which resuscitates Samuel Butler's hypothesis - from The Authoress of the Odyssey (1897) - that the real maker of the Odyssey was a Sicilian woman, who employed well-known landmarks from her own island for most of its more famous incidents.

Graves has her casting herself as Nausicaä, while her hometown is forced to play double duty as both Phaeacia and Ithaka. The whole concludes with a massacre, just like the Odyssey itself.

Robert Graves: The Golden Fleece (1944)

And then there's his earlier novel The Golden Fleece [retitled "Hercules, My Shipmate" for the US market], which turns the whole quest into a "Gimbutasian" struggle between Goddess worshippers and savage Apollonian invaders.

Or, as one of the more positive commentators on Goodreads puts it:

The Golden Fleece is an encyclopedic novel of all things Greek and pre-Greek. Graves incorporates or refers to many myths and legends, from the cosmogony through the trade war between Troy and Greece and the Twelve Labors of Hercules. And from various cultures, including Pelasgian, Cretan, Thracian, Colchian, Taurean, Albanian, Amazonian, Troglodyte, and of course Greek, he works into his novel many interesting customs, about fertility orgies, weddings, births, funerals, and ghosts; prayers, sacrifices, omens, dreams, and mystery cults; boar hunting, barley growing, trading, and ship building, sailing, and rowing; feasting, singing, dancing, story telling, and clothes wearing; boxing, murdering, warring, and treaty negotiating; and more. It all feels vivid, authentic, and strange.

In other words, there's no harm at all in reimagining and reinterpreting these old myths, as long as it's in the interests of sharpening our responses to the stories themselves - as well as the consummate works of literary art in which they've been preserved.

However, it's important to bear in mind that Apollonius of Rhodes was a scholar and librarian at the Library of Alexandria when he composed the Argonautica. Homer was - well, nobody really knows, but probably a Bard and performer of his own poems, in a possibly pre-literate culture. They were, in other words, completely different poets, from widely separate eras of Ancient Greek culture, who lived 500 years apart.

Sir Thomas Malory: Le Morte d'Arthur (1485)

Try transposing these dates onto Le Morte d'Arthur, Malory's version of the Arthurian legends, published by William Caxton as one of the first printed books in English. The five and a half centuries between Malory and us should give you some idea of the actual distance in time between Homer and Apollonius.

If you extend the metaphor, and go back 1,000 years from Malory, you'll find yourself in the approximate era of the real King Arthur (if there ever was such a person). That gives you some idea of the gap between Apollonius and his own heroes, Jason's Argonauts.

Homer, by contrast, lived only 500-odd years later than his subject-matter, the siege of Troy (and its myriad dire consequences). Malory certainly could (and has been) used as a kind of guidebook to Arthurian Britain, but the more precise and "euhemeristic" these educed details become, the more absurd the whole project seems.

Geoffrey Ashe: The Traveller's Guide to Arthurian Britain (1997)

It'd be lovely to go back in a time machine and check out the facts for ourselves - though it might be a bit difficult to square the border region referred to in Hittite records as Taruisa (Troy?) or Wilusa (Greek "Wilios" or "Ilios") with the Troy of our imaginations.

Enterprises such as Severin's are certainly not futile. There is, however, little doubt that he tends to take an ahistorical, over-literal approach to both the textual and topographical details of the folktales that inspired his journeys. Whether or not this assists us in interpreting these myths, and the poems that embody them, is more debatable.

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Konstantinos Petrou Kavafis [C. P. Cavafy] (1863-1933)

An alternative approach can be found in the work of the modern Greek poet C. P. Cavafy, who set out instead to remind us of the deep metaphorical significance of these legends for all of us - but particularly those who still inhabit those ancient lands today. Here's his great poem "Ithaka" (along with my own attempt at a version for contemporary travellers):

C. P. Cavafy: Ithaka (1911)

Ithaka


Before you set out for Ithaka
pray for a long itinerary
full of protracted stopovers.
Customs officials, Interpol,
the zombie Police Chief – not a problem:
as long as you keep your shit together,
staple a smile to your fat face,
they won’t be able to finger you.
Customs officials, Interpol,
the paparazzi, will look right through you
– unless you invite them up for a drink,
unless they’re already inside your head.

Pray for a long itinerary:
landing for the umpteenth time
on the tarmac of a third-world airport
at fiery psychedelic dawn;
haggling in the duty-frees
for coral necklaces and pearls,
designer scents & silks & shades,
as many marques as you can handle; 
visiting every provincial town,
sampling every drug & kick …

Never forget about Ithaka:
getting there is your destiny;
no need to rush – it’ll still be waiting
no matter how many years you take.
By the time you touch down you’ll be bone-tired,
happy with what you snapped in transit,
just a few daytrips left to do.
Ithaka shouted you the trip,
you’d never have travelled without her.
She’s got fuck-all to show you now.

Dirt-poor, dingy … she’s up front.
It’s over now; you’ve seen so much
there’s no need to tell you what Ithaka means.


(30/8-12/10/04)

Korina Cassianou: Odysseus of Ithaka (2011)

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Stuff the British Stole

Marc Fennell: Stuff the British Stole (2022-24)

Stuff the British Stole, for those of you who haven't yet come across it, is a "television documentary series which premiered in 2022", but which has only just arrived on Netflix NZ:

A co-production of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, the series is hosted by Australian journalist Marc Fennell, and delves into various controversies around historically and culturally significant objects that were taken by the United Kingdom during its colonial era, and have been the subject of demands for their repatriation back to their homelands.

I guess the point of view it promulgates could be summed up more or less as follows:

Geographic Enigma: Europe According To Ireland (2025)

As one respondent on Facebook, where I found this gem, remarked: "A bit tough on the Welsh!"

In other words, everyone hates the English. I think I'm okay with that. In the second episode of the series, concentrating on the evil King Edward the First's brutal theft of the Stone of Destiny from Scotland, I found myself chanting "They can take my life, but they'll never take my freedom!", and even repeating (with tears in my eyes) Braveheart's celebrated account of the Battle of Bannockburn: "They fought like warrior poets; they fought like Scotsmen ..."

So you can see which side of these various controversies I'm likely to espouse. Which is odd, really, as the Australian side of my genealogy leads back to England and the Vale of the White Horse after a couple of generations. It's only the New Zealand side which is so proud of its descent from Gaelic-speaking Mackenzies, Macleans, and Macleods in the Scottish Highlands (as well, of course, as those penny-pinching Rosses of Dingwall).

Be that as it may, I'm happy to report that Marc Fennell embodies the finest traditions of iconoclastic Aussie journalism. He's brash, vulgar, and sniggers at all the wrong moments. If he's a little prone to over-simplify immensely complex issues, one would have to say in his defence that at least he's prepared to drag them out into the harsh light of day for scrutiny.

William Dalrymple & Anita Anand: Koh-i-noor (2017)

Take the first episode of his TV show, for instance. It deals with the vexed subject of the Koh-i-noor diamond, the "Mountain of Light." Should it still be sitting in the Tower of London, stuck in the Queen Mom's crown? Probably not. Certainly the circumstances of its acquisition - extorted from a 10 (or possibly 11: opinions differ on that)-year-old child, the Maharaja of the Sikh Empire, Duleep Singh, after the annexation of the Punjab by the British East India Company in 1849 - were a little less than edifying.

Franz Xaver Winterhalter: Duleep Singh (1838–1893)

Even at the time this was seen as pretty reprehensible, and Queen Victoria herself apparently felt uneasy about being presented with the jewel by the choleric Governor-General of India, Lord Dalhousie. Was it really his to give, she wondered? She didn't give it back, though. But neither did she wear it, at least until the young Duleep Singh, who'd become a favourite at her court, "regifted" it to her, moments after he was allowed to hold it one more time whilst posing for a portrait in 1854.

Among the many complicating aspects of this sorry saga - acknowledged in passing by Marc Fennell, but spelt out in detail in William Dalrymple & Anita Anand's excellent book on the subject - is the fact that the Sikh empire straddled modern-day India and Pakistan, giving both governments a pretext for demanding the jewel back. Then there are the many descendants of Duleep Singh and his relatives, each of whom has a claim.

And then there's the fact that Duleep's father, the so-called "Lion of the Punjab", Ranjit Singh, himself stole (or "acquired forceably", as he might have preferred to put it) the diamond from Shah Shujah, the erstwhile ruler of the Durrani Empire. The Durranis, in their turn, acquired it from the Afsharid dynasty of Iran, who looted it from the Mughal treasury in Delhi during their invasion of India in 1739. Troubled times.

Iranian ruler Nadir Shah on the Peacock Throne after his conquest of Delhi

After that it becomes increasingly difficult to distinguish the Koh-i-noor from various other fabled gems in Indian history. It is, however, known to have formed part of the famous Peacock throne of the Mughal emperors.

"Quis?" - to whom? - as Lord Marchmain puts it in Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited, when trying to determine to which of his variously unsatisfactory children he should leave the family estate.

The Sikhs have a claim, the Afghans have a claim, the Iranians have a claim, the descendants of the Mughals have a claim, as do the ancient rulers of Hindustan. Even the God Krishna could be said to have a claim. It all makes for riveting TV, that's for sure.

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George Healy: Abraham Lincoln (1867)

As a nation, we began by declaring that "all men are created equal." We now practically read it "all men are created equal, except negroes." When the Know-Nothings [= MAGAs] get control, it will read "all men are created equal, except negroes, and foreigners, and Catholics." When it comes to this I should prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretense of loving liberty – to Russia, for instance, where despotism can be taken pure, and without the base alloy of hypocrisy.

- Abraham Lincoln

As usual, Abe Lincoln hits the nail on the head. It's not the fact that British colonial officials were a pack of thieves which is surprising, it's the degree of hypocrisy with which they attempted to disguise their depredations.

All conquerors are light-fingered by nature. I think we can take that as read. How else are you supposed to demonstrate how victorious you've been except with a pile of swag? The whole concept of the Roman Triumph is based around it. The idea of the "spoils of war" has even been carefully legislated in international law.

But just think for a moment how many indignant denunciations you've read of Napoleon's art thefts in Italy and Germany, and how blatantly they served to swell the holdings of the Louvre.

George Clooney, dir.: The Monuments Men (2014)

And then there are those wicked Nazis. There's a whole movie about Goering and the other "collectors" in the Third Reich who did their best to get down on the best of Europe's paintings and sculptures. How vulgar of them! How nouveau riche ...

The contrast with the thieving British colonial proconsuls and administrators, who had to arrange things to make it seem as if they'd somehow stumbled on the valuable artefacts they accumulated with such assiduity, is quite telling. Take, for instance, the notorious remark made by the founder of British India, Robert Clive, about his own restraint after defeating the Nawab of Bengal and his French allies in 1757:

Consider the situation in which the victory at Plassey had placed me. A great prince was dependent on my pleasure; an opulent city lay at my mercy, its richest bankers bid against each other for my smiles; I walked through vaults which were thrown open to me alone, piled on either hand with gold and jewels! Mr. Chairman, at this moment I stand astonished at my own moderation!

Rather than being chided for what he took, he expected to be congratulated for what he didn't take (not a lot, by all accounts).

Fred Barnard: Mr. Pecksniff contemplating his bust (1872)

No wonder Charles Dickens was inspired to create the character Pecksniff to satirise this curious trait in the British character, in possibly the most scathing - and, interestingly, worst-selling - of all his novels, Martin Chuzzlewit (1844).

Steal by all means, but don't pretend you're doing anything but that. The principle was perhaps best summed up in the words of another great British hypocrite, David Cameron (or, if you prefer, Baron Cameron of Chipping Norton - though he's probably better known as the unwitting architect of Brexit), when he was asked to return the Koh-i-noor to India:

During a 2010 visit to India, the British prime minister, David Cameron, told local media that the diamond would stay in Britain. “If you say yes to one [request], you suddenly find the British Museum would be empty,” Cameron said. “I’m afraid it’s going to have to stay put.”

The circular nature of this reasoning appears to have eluded him.

In any case, here are the various episodes of this thought-provoking series available to us so far:

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"They came, they saw, they looted"
Marc Fennell: Stuff the British Stole (2022-24)

The British Empire stole a lot of stuff. Those objects are housed in museums and galleries across the world. We peel back the true histories behind those objects - and meet those who want them back.

Series 1 (2022):


1. Jewel of Denial

   At the heart of the Crown Jewels is the tragedy of a 10-year-old Sikh boy ripped from his mother and kingdom.



2. Stoned

   Underneath the late Queen Elizabeth II’s coronation throne was a sacred stone that was stolen from Scottish kings. One Christmas night, a group of Glasgow students decided to steal it back.



3. Chipped

   Scattered across Australia are fragments of a mysterious ancient mosaic found in Palestine. Putting the pieces together, reveals how the British Empire shaped the modern Middle East.



4. Shadow Boxer

   In the wake of an epic rebellion by Chinese martial artists against foreign military forces a golden warrior statue is looted by British colonial forces. But how on earth did it end up in Australia?



5. The Crow Flies

   Sign a deal with Queen Victoria or face disease and devastation? That was a choice facing one of Canada’s proudest leaders. But did the British forces then literally steal the shirt from his back?



6. The Return

   In an unmarked grave in Liverpool lies the mystery of one of Western Australia’s greatest resistance fighters. This is the story of a courageous and inventive team that found a way to bring him home.

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Series 2 (2024):


1. Australia's Mummy?

   Marc Fennell travels to the Pyramids of Giza, down the Nile and to the very heart of the British Empire to uncover the truth of how the ancient Egyptian mummified remains of a child ended up in Australia's oldest university.



2. Parthenon Sculptures

   Stephen Fry joins Marc Fennell on a gripping adventure, from the pinnacle of the Acropolis to a secluded robotics lab high in the Tuscan mountains, to a shipwreck under the Aegean Sea.



3. Operation Legacy

   From the bustling streets of Nairobi to a secluded royal retreat in the Kenyan mountains, Marc Fennell is on the hunt for secret documents that reveal a brutal history of war and a crumbling empire.



4. World's Largest Diamond

   Marc Fennell delves into South Africa's first diamond mine and the opulent realms of London to uncover the intriguing tale of how the largest gem-quality diamond ultimately reached the hands of the British royal family.



5. The Mystery Sphinx

   For years, visitors to the British Museum have been puzzled by an exhibit: a sphinx that looks almost identical to those from Egypt. Marc Fennell discovers the wild story of theft and the secrets of a breathtaking island.



6. Irish Giant

   Marc Fennell unpicks the twisting history of Charles Byrne, the Irish Giant. It is a story of betrayal, exploitation, and the brutal reality of the medical industry.



7. Great Rubber Heist

   Rubber is everywhere now, but it wasn't always this way. Marc Fennell explores the Amazon jungle to help unravel an elaborate botanical heist that changed the world.



8. The Girl & The Doll

   In 2022, a tattered black doll was sent from Britain to the First Nations people of Lutruwita (Tasmania), carrying with it a devastating story of a stolen child. Marc Fennell unravels a story of heartbreak and injustice.

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Marc Fennell: Stuff the British Stole (2020-23)

Before the TV series, Stuff the British Stole started as a podcast in 2020. A very few - Tipu's Tiger, the Elgin Marbles - of the recordings listed below overlap with the TV documentaries, but not many. I suppose it goes to show how many such stolen objects there are to choose from!

Throughout its reign, the British Empire stole a lot of stuff. Today those objects are housed in genteel institutions across the UK and the world. They usually come with polite plaques. This is a series about the not-so-polite history behind those objects.

Series 1 (2020):


1. 22/11/2020: A Tiger and a Scream

   How a toy tiger became the symbol of a struggle between India and its former British colonisers.

2. 29/11/2020: Blood Art

   What if your doorstop was evidence of brutal mass murder and wholesale theft?

3. 6/12/2020: Best.Named.Dog.Ever

   Don’t let their fluffy hair and judging eyes fool you, Pekingese dogs are hiding a secret. Their history encompasses torture, hubris, war, and some very long sleeves. Most importantly these dogs — well, one in particular — may hold the key to understanding the sometimes vexed relationship China has with the West.

4. 13/12/2020: The Headhunters

   The arrival of Europeans in NZ kicked off a trade in Mokomokai — tattooed heads but these colonial souvenirs have their own complex history.

5. 20/12/2020: Shots Fired

   The Gweagal shield is just one of the things James Cook and his shipmates took from the local people when they landed in Botany Bay. Why has it become the most contentious?

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Have you ever wandered around a museum and thought “How on Earth did all of this stuff get here?” You’re not alone.
Throughout its reign, the British Empire stole a lot of stuff. Today those objects are housed in genteel institutions across the UK and the world. They usually come with polite plaques.
This podcast tells the stories about the not-so-polite history behind those looted objects.
In Season Two, Walkley award-winning host Marc Fennell will take you to a temple, a tree, a lab, a paradise island, a crime scene and a stage. You’ll uncover abductions, scandals and a murder investigation.
Season two of Stuff the British Stole is co-produced with CBC Podcasts.

Series 2 (2021):


1. 20/10/2021: The Abductions

   A war. A ransom. And a stunning recovery mission.
   Five elaborately carved panels were buried in a New Zealand swamp to protect it from a war.
   Then 150 years later, they’re acquired by a British collector before being sold to a Swiss-Bolivian collector in Geneva.
   And their long journey home began when a kidnap ransom payment had to be made.
   This is the remarkable story of the Motunui Epa.

2. 27/10/2021: Losing Your Marbles

   They’ve seen wars, the bottom of the ocean and even - bizarrely - been part of a boxing match.
   The story of how the Parthenon Marbles actually ended up in London’s British Museum is a wild tale featuring bribes, court cases and some extremely dodgy deals.
   There’s been a centuries-long campaign to get them back to their homeland. Now, a team of Greek-Australians have decided that the time for diplomacy is over and a new tactic is required.

3. 3/11/2021: Cup Runneth

   In County Cork, Ireland, there’s a tree that locals call the Chalice Tree. Local lore says it’s where British Redcoats disrupted a secret Catholic mass, killed two priests and took a sacred chalice.
   Now that chalice sits in London’s Victoria & Albert Museum.
   But what happened in the intervening 200 years is now being pieced together by two Irish families: the O’Keeffes and the McAulliffe’s.

4. 10/11/2021: Not Your Venus

   Sarah 'Saartjie' Baartman was taken to the UK by a British doctor. But did she know what she was signing up for?
   Stage-named 'The Hottentot Venus', Sarah was paraded around freak shows in London and Paris.
   During her life and even after her death, she was objectified, mistreated and abused.
   More than 200 years after her death, her life story reveals confronting truths about the treatment of black female bodies and how much has, and hasn’t, changed.

5. 17/11/2021: Strange Fowle

   It’s become a symbol for extinction; the dodo is a semi-mythical creature which most of us know only through Alice in Wonderland.
   But one particular dodo was the victim of a crime – murder.
   Its skull now sits in the Oxford University Museum of Natural History. And it holds the clues to a thrilling mystery which illustrates a little-known colonial legacy.

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Throughout its reign, the British Empire stole a lot of stuff. Today the Empire's loot sits in museums, galleries, private collections and burial sites with polite plaques. But its history is often messier than the plaques suggest.
In each episode of this global smash hit podcast, Walkley award-winning journalist, author and genetic potluck, Marc Fennell, takes you on the wild, evocative, sometimes funny, often tragic adventure of how these stolen treasures got to where they live today. These objects will ultimately help us see the modern world — and ourselves — in a different light.
This is a co-production of the ABC and CBC Podcasts.

Series 3 (2023):


1. 28/06/2023: The Head in the Library

   In an old country town high school library there is a glass case that displays something highly unusual and, for some, confronting.
   Inside that glass case is a mummified head and according to its plaque, it was donated to Grafton High School in 1915.
   Now, over 100 years later, questions are being raised about where it really came from and whether it really belongs there.

2. 5/07/2023: Bottles in the Basement

   Deep in the cellars of one of England’s grandest country homes, covered in dirt and cobwebs, lay dozens of bottles of ancient rum.
   Their discovery set off a frenzy among collectors vying to own the oldest rum in the world.
   But where did they come from and who produced them? Sealed inside was the story of an enslaved people in one of the first overseas colonies of the British Empire - Barbados.

3. 12/07/2023: The Unfinished Prince

   There's a body buried in the grounds of Windsor Castle whose real home is thousands of miles away. Since 2007, there have been calls for Prince Alamayu’s remains to be returned to Ethiopia.
   But how exactly did this young royal end up alone in England, and buried at Windsor Castle? To answer that we have to go back to 1868 to hear the message the British wanted to send that still reverberates to this day.
   If this episode has raised any issues for you, call Lifeline on 13 11 14.

4. 19/07/2023: Zero Marks The Spot

   It’s round. It has a hole in it. It symbolises nothing and yet it is the possibility of something... meet zero.
   The zero we know and love today is the foundation of our modern world. And we have India to thank for it; in particular one special Indian birch bark book — the Bakhshali manuscript.
   This is the story of how these fragile pages travelled to Oxford University and what their future looks like.

5. 26/7/2023: The Fever Tree Hunt

   Most heists target gold, jewels or cash. This one targeted illegal seeds.
   As the British established their sprawling empire across the subcontinent and beyond, they encountered a formidable adversary — malaria.
   There was a cure — the bark of the Andean cinchona tree. The only problem? The Dutch and the French were also looking to corner the market in cinchona. And the trees themselves were under threat.
   Grab a gin and tonic and come with us to hear how a botanical empire took off — and gave birth to a quintessential cocktail.

6. 2/8/2023: The Girl Called Pocahontas

   How do you uncover the true life of a woman whose existence is wrapped in myth, propaganda and a famous animated children’s movie?
   This is the true story of Matoaka - a young Powhatan girl who you probably know as Pocahontas. This is the mystery of a child, a hidden history and a stolen story.
   Audio courtesy of Missing Matoaka.

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Marc Fennell: No One Saw it Coming (2025)