Libertine Dreams

Sir Kenneth MacMillan’s Manon is set in one of the most notorious periods of French history: the Regency era under Philippe d’Orléans. Pre-revolutionary France was ripe with corruption, and this is reflected in the trajectory of Manon’s heroine. In the first act of the ballet, she is an innocent young woman about to enter a convent. By the final act, she is branded a prostitute and dies as a convict in a rotting Louisiana swamp. With vivid detail, MacMillan shows us the corrupt world of libertine France in a ballet filled with lust and death.

History Trail Tour | Fremantle Markets

Fremantle Markets was established in 1897, and throughout the years, has become an iconic tourist destination. Steeped in the port city of Fremantle’s rich indigenous, maritime, convict, colonial and migrant history, the market is one of the most visited places in Western Australia. It is located at the southern end of Fremantle’s ‘Cappuccino Strip’ and housed in a grand Victorian heritage building.

The real Emily Brontë was red in tooth and claw, forget the on-screen romance

With their fierce, independent heroines, brooding anti-heroes and all sorts of dastardly plots, it’s no surprise the Brontë sisters and their novels occupy a special place in screen adaptations of literature. Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights (1847) tends to attract different kinds of film and TV adaptations to the usual polite drawing-room dramas. This is partly because Wuthering Heights is a brutal novel, despite all the romance associated with it.