Jane Austen's Hampshire home and family

In High School I read and loved two of Jane Austen (1775-1817)’s most famous novels. But this was all fiction I assumed, and not Jane’s real life. Her father died suddenly in 1805 and left no property or income to his daughters. And since his wife and 2 daughters were not allowed to work, the women were left dependent on the support of family men. Luckily Jane's brother Edward had been adopted by his cousins, inheriting their estate called Chawton House Hamps and becoming financially secure himself.

Jane Austen lived and wrote in Chawton, Hampshire

built c1690 and later renovated

London Perfect

                                            

By 1807 Edward moved the women into his 2-storey red brick home, providing happy and productive years of Jane’s life. Each day included looking after Jane’s mother, writing at a small table, eating together, games with the nieces and nephews, piano playing, sharing long walks, going to church and sharing sewing with sister Cassandra in the evening.

 Dining parlour and fire. Jane's writing desk

Pinterest

Much of what is known about Jane's domestic routine comes from the niece Caroline Austen who in later life recorded the daily routine at Chawton. But little was written about the house’s architectural history. So now, 63 years after I read the book in Literature, it is time to examine her treasured and final house in the charming Chawton village.

The house was originally built in C14th as a small farmhouse, with later additions and renovations made over the years. The house was a thatched, timber dwelling built on the site for use as a farmhouse and then a coaching inn. In 1769 it was bought by the Knight family, distant Austen cousins, and became part of their Chawton estate. The Knights didn’t have any children themselves, so they formally adopted Jane’s brother Edward as their heir.

There were many minor alterations made by Edward Knight for his family eg the blocking of the window from the drawing room to the street, and adding a new Gothic window, looking onto the garden. The garden was extended for privacy, but retained a view towards Chawton Park and the woods surrounding the House where the ladies exercised.

The Drawing Room

 

The current structure resulted from renovations, blending elements of medieval & Georgian architecture. The exterior featured stone and brick with a steeply pitched roof and a prominent chimney. The interior showed the era’s artistry: ornate fireplaces, wooden panelling, intricate plasterwork.

Chaise Lounge

Destinations Detours and Dreams

Kitchen, 

pan360

In 1809, Edward offered his mum and sisters a small house on his Chawton estate. They moved that year, together with their friend Martha Lloyd, forming a cosy female household. Jane lived there for her last 8 years, but suffering from ill health in May 1817, she left for treatment in Winchester. She soon died and was buried in Winchester Cathedral.

Mrs Austen and Cassandra lived at the House for life. The house returned to the Chawton Estate with Cassandra’s death in 1845, and divided into 3 dwellings for estate workers, then as an estate office and a working men’s club.

In 1940 a local founded the Jane Austen Society to try to save the House. The Society attracted a patron, Mr TE Carpenter; he personally bought the House and bequeathed it to the nation as a permanent memorial to his son who’d been killed in action in WW2. Carpenter created the Jane Austen Memorial Trust to run the House as a Museum, and it was formally opened by the Duke of Wellington in July 1949. Jane Austen Society also built up the collections and funded the building renovations. In particular major roof repairs in 2021-2, via Historic England and the Historic Houses Foundation, keep the building watertight.

Since then, more parts of the House have been restored, the interior being restored to the time when the Austens lived there. Today Jane Austen’s House is a Grade I listed site, a certified Museum and an important literary site. It holds a major collection of Jane Austen’s treasures eg her loved jewellery, first editions of her books, personal letters, textiles, paintings and portraits of her friends and family, and the tiny table at which she wrote her famous novels. There’s also a beautiful cottage garden.

It was here her six novels of manners, ground-breaking at the time, critiqued the landed gentry of Regency England. Sense and Sensibility, published in 1811, was her first full-length; Pride and Prejudice 1813, and two more novels published in her lifetime: Mansfield Park (1814) and Emma (1816). Northanger Abbey and Persuasion were published postdeath in July 1817. Most of the places Jane referenced in her novels were places she lived in, visited or was inspired by. Most of her letters were burned but from those that survived, she was not a boring writer. She had a sharp wit, and she wasn't afraid to use it, especially in private

Persuasion by Austen, 1817

Amazon

Visit the rooms where she lived and wrote; see her writing table, jewellery, letters and first editions of her novels. Explore the pretty cottage garden, play traditional garden games, enjoy Regency clothes and see bonnet designing!

"The Stamp Thief" a good documentary

The Stamp Thief was a documentary investigating a Holocaust event: that some unknown Nazi stole priceless stamp collections from concentration camp victims and buried the stolen stamps in a small town in Poland. Producer Gary Gilbert set out to confirm the story and recover the stamps. His approach: do a fake film shoot. His goal: to deliver justice by returning the stamps to their rightful owners or community.

The Stamp Thief documentary was written by Gary Gilbert, 2025

Reddit

The film chased the story of a rogue Nazi officer tasked with cataloguing the valuables of Jews sent to concentration camps. Apparently he seized the chance to steal millions of dollars worth of rare stamps and buried them in his home, now in Poland. In a real-life mission, Gilbert embarked on a daring quest to uncover the truth and recover the stamps. Disguising his investigation, Gilbert sought to return the stamps to their rightful heirs or to a museum, delivering a small yet powerful act of justice 75+ years post-Holocaust. This true tale unfolded in the suspenseful documentary.

Director Dan Sturman was an investigative journalist and is now noted L.A-based director, writer and producer who created Academy Award-winning documentaries. Sturman has since filmed many subjects, his works including quality documentaries shown at classy festivals eg Twin Towers.

Sturman and Gilbert debated about finding stamps stolen by the Nazi officer and buried in a basement in Legnica Poland. Stamp Thief set out to find the stamps after hearing the story from his fellow screen writer, David Weisberg. Who could invent a more intriguing premise? David's father, psychiatrist   Paul Weisberg treated a fireman married to the daughter of the Nazi who allegedly stole the stamps from a concentration camp. 

Nazi Trio, found by producer Dylan Nelson

Film Freeway

Stamp Thief was a probing search: while the Nazis occupied Poland in WW2, the Nazi officer whose job was to catalogue valuables belonging to Jews sent to camps saw his chance. Sadly this was not the case of a hero who disobeyed orders and tried to help the victims of the Holocaust. The Nazi officer, who decided to pocket millions of dollars worth of stamps stolen from the victims, buried them in the basement of his home. Thanks to the discovery of a detailed map showing the approximate location of the stamps, a group of Americans flew to Poland.

 When the L.A television writer-producer learned that an SS officer probably stole stamps from Jewish concentration camp prisoners and hidden them in a Polish basement, the American launched a long quest to find the rumoured box of treasures, despite the minimal chance of locating them.

Sample of stamps from pre-WW2

JIFF

How Gilbert found about the stamps was an unlikely tale. It began with a psychiatrist who happened to have a patient in the 1970s. The patient told the story of the missing stamps, and the psychiatrist became so intrigued, he helped devise an elaborate retrieval plan to dig them up behind the Iron Curtain. He never followed through, but he shared the plan with his son, who happened to be an avid stamp collector. As the film unfolded, the pieces fell into place and the story became increasingly engrossing. The team that went to Poland in 2015 grew more invested in returning the stamps to their rightful owners. So does the audience!

The mission was steeped in symbolism. For Gilbert, a single stamp not only represented the many thousands of stamps stolen from Jews, but the 6 million who’d never reclaim their personal treasures. Gilbert knew the second he heard the story that he was going to go, because the only thing crazier than going would be to not go. What’s craziest was how Gilbert tried to retrieve the stamps. The more he talked to lawyers, the more he realised how difficult it was to get seized Jewish property out of Poland. So he planned to access the basement by pretending to use it as a film set for a fake historical drama. [It was hard labour, digging 4+’ into the basement ground that had been solid since WW2]. The Poland expedition meant deceiving the Polish building manager, residents and film crew, and members of the U.S team had to grapple with the ethics of their dishonesty!

The team included Sturman as well as Gilbert’s personal contractor who posed as the set designer. But Sturman really came to supervise the surreptitious dig for the stamps during fake rehearsals in the basement. Those involved all hoped that once the truth emerged, the misled people would see that the deceit happened to right a greater wrong.

Instead Polish reactions to discovering the truth were largely scary, but an unknown hero emerged in Polish crew member, Sylvia. She chose to fully support the Americans and their mission. Her decision as a Polish person was that each Polish person should have been self-responsible.

There were no criticisms in the on-line reviews, but here's my own feedback. I didn’t know the film was going to be about research and although that was my own fault, it was occasionally annoying. I wasn’t fascinated in their endless interviews, phone calls, meetings and letters. It might have been a fictional adaptation of the normal story of Nazis taking gold wedding rings & gold dental crowns from victims before they went into the gas chambers. And although I knew exactly why the team acted secretly and illegally as they did, the immorality of Lying for a Good Cause was barely tackled. 

I already knew that many modern Poles were still denying their nation’s part in the Holocaust. But the intractable mistrust between some Poles and Jewish Polish survivor families was not really challenged in the film.

Gary Gilbert, Judy Kirshner Gilbert, Elizabeth Malloy, Dan Sturman

in Hollywood, April 2025, 

Larchmontbuzz

 

Tower of London: palace, execution, tours

After defeating the last Saxon king of England Harold II at the Battle of Hastings, William the Conqueror/William I of England would con­trol his new kingdom. He distributed the conquered lands to his fav­our­ite nobles, a useful practice from wars in Norm­andy. They built motte-and-bailey forts and soldiers built a wooden tower to house the battal­ion, its weapons, horses, food and val­uables. The bar­r­acks could become a refuge, if the outer defences were breached. Around the hill, Norman soldiers built an enclosure for a well, rais­ing crops, feeding livestock and holding weap­ons. 

Upper photo: Tower of London

Lower photo: entrance through the Byward Towers

defended by the moat and draw­bridge

Post-Hastings William I wanted to stake his claim to Saxon lands and to control hostile subjects. Clergy­man Gundulf (1024–1108), who des­ig­ned castles & ch­ur­ches in France, became Bishop of Roch­ester in 1077 and was asked to design the new fort­ress-castle. In 1078, William ordered building the White Tower of London, a 90’ high square tower with tapering walls, soaring up over Lon­don. The 1st floor had liv­ing quarters, soldiers’ ref­ec­t­ory, dormitory and Roman­esque Chapel of St John. The 2nd floor’s rooms were for the con­stable/Tower’s comm­ander: a great hall, ch­apel gall­ery, meet­ing room and living-rooms. And there was a cellar.

The Tower took 20 years to build, only finished when William II had a stone wall built around the Tower. Then Gun­d­ulf began a stone curtain-wall enclosing land between the Tower and riv­er. Under Henry III (r1216-72) and Edward I (r1272-1307), the Tow­er reached today’s basic design: the central White Tower surround­ed by two curtain walls with their 20 towers. The main C13th entrance was via two cyl­ind­rical Byward Towers and defended by the moat and draw­bridge.

Two of the Tower’s early prisoners of state were King John the Good of France, taken in Battle of Poitiers in 1356; Char­les Duke of Orléans, captured at Agincourt in 1415.

When King Edward IV died in 1483, Richard Duke of Glouc­ester became lord protector of his son Edward V. Glouc­ester put Ed­ward and his young brother Richard Duke of York in the Tower, awaiting Edward V’s coronation. But spurred on by Glouc­es­ter, Parl­iam­ent made the 2 princes illegitimate, confirming Glouc­ester as King Richard III. Were the young Princes in the Tower mur­d­ered in the Tower in mid 1483?

Inmates wrote of torture in Bell Tower records and torture objects used in 1500s & 1600s are in the Royal Arm­ouries.

By the 1500s Henry VII abandoned his Tower Palace home after losing his firstborn son. His most lasting contribution was founding the Tower Yeo­men of the Guard, direct ancestors of today’s Yeoman Warders/beefeaters.

Yeomen of the Guard

guarded the tower interior, including the crown jewels

Then the site became a notorious prison, the Tower’s most famous prisoners being gaoled by nasty King Henry VIII. When Henry sought to divorce Cather­ine of Aragon and split from the Cath­olic Church, Thomas More wouldn’t accept the king as supreme head of the Church of England. More was gaoled in the Tower, convicted of treason and executed.

2 of Henry’s wives went to the Tower. Anne Boleyn gave him one daug­h­t­er (later Elizabeth I) but no sons, so Anne was arrested for treason & executed in 1536. Henry’s 5th wife, Catherine Howard, was arrested & executed for adultery.

Inevitably the Catholics and Protestants battled on. Young King Ed­ward VI, who’d been raised a Prot­es­tant, created his Device for the Succ­es­sion (1553), dis­inheriting his Catholic half-sister Mary and his Prot­estant half-sister Elizabeth. Instead his crown passed through his aunt’s line to her Prot­estant granddaughter Jane Grey. But noone told Jane & only 3 days after Edward’s death in 1553 she became became queen anyhow. Queen Jane quickly lost the support of her entire Privy Council; in 1553 the Catholic Mary was formally declared by Parl­iament as the next mon­ar­ch. And although Queen Mary rel­uc­t­antly signed Jane’s death warrant, Jane’s trial and execution quickly followed.

 (ex Queen) Jane Grey was executed, 1553

Historic UK

Queen Mary’s fears about usurpers continued. She gaoled her half sister, Princess Elizabeth-whom Mary believed had masterminded the plots. So in 1554, 20-year-old Eliz­a­b­eth was also kept under house arrest in the Tower, living as mum Anne Boleyn had. Still, finding no evidence of treason, Mary moved Elizabeth from the Tower to house-arrest elsewhere.

Mary died in 1558 and Elizabeth took the throne. The new queen still used the Tower to hold enemies of the crown; from Walter Raleigh to Guy Fawkes, infamous prisoners and deaths at the Tower maintained its notorious reputation. Even Samuel Pepys was ac­cus­ed of complic­ity in the Popish Plot, selling naval secrets to France and piracy. He was imprisoned there in 1679 and eventual­ly disch­arged, but was later re-gaoled for plotting to restore exiled King James.

The Tower also stored chancery records, relating to diplomatic corr­es­­p­on­dence and government­ decisions, plus pr­operty ownership docu­m­ents and tax­at­ion. The Records Office was in the Wake­field Tower, the largest in the Tower of London complex, where it remained un­til 1858. Only then did the Public Records Office move to Chancery Lane.

Now the blood has been cleaned up, the Tower is London’s most famous tourist site. Admire the Crown Jewels, including the coron­ation reg­a­lia worn at a new monarch’s investiture, and the cerem­on­ial regalia worn at the State Op­ening of Parliament. St Edward’s Crown is a C17th replace­ment for Saxon King Edward the Confessor’s crown.

Crown jewels

British Heritage

  

Life expectancy 2025, country & gender

Life Expectancy at birth of the world's populations, based on the latest United Nations Population Division estimates.

World Map Life Expectancy at Birth, UN 2023, Wiki:

Dark green: Aus & NZ, Canada, Japan, W & Sth Europe etc

Light greens: USA, Brasil, Peru, Chile, China, Russia, Algeria..

Yellow & Orange: Sth Africa, Egypt, Libya, Zambia, Angola..

Countries ranked by life expectancy (2025): 

Rank	Country	Life Expectancy both sexes	Females Life Expectancy	Males Life Expectancy
1	Hong Kong	85.77	88.39	83.1
2	Japan	85	88.03	81.99
3	South Korea	84.53	87.4	81.44
5	Switzerland	84.23	86.06	82.34
6	Australia	84.21	85.97	82.43
7	Italy	84.03	86.01	81.94
8	Singapore	84	86.48	81.53
9	Spain	83.96	86.59	81.27
11	Malta	83.63	85.51	81.69
12	Norway	83.61	85.09	82.11
13	France	83.58	86.31	80.73
14	Sweden	83.58	85.34	81.84
15	Macao	83.42	85.49	81.26
16	UnArabEmir	83.23	84.44	82.37
17	Iceland	83.15	84.57	81.8
19	Canada	82.88	85.03	80.74
20	Israel	82.77	84.81	80.67
21	Ireland	82.75	84.72	80.79
22	Portugal	82.72	85.37	79.89
23	Qatar	82.68	83.6	81.96
24	Luxemb'g	82.49	84.06	80.91
25	Neth'lands	82.45	83.98	80.89
26	Belgium	82.43	84.57	80.26
28	New Zealand	82.39	84	80.77
29	Austria	82.29	84.57	79.97
30	Denmark	82.25	84.1	80.39
31	Finland	82.24	84.91	79.6
32	Greece	82.22	84.6	79.74
33	Puerto Rico	82.08	85.5	78.5
34	Cyprus	81.99	83.93	80.05
35	Slovenia	81.94	84.58	79.33
36	Germany	81.71	84.01	79.42
37	U. Kingdom	81.6	83.45	79.72
38	Bahrain	81.58	82.26	81.03
39	Chile	81.54	83.37	79.67
41	Costa Rica	81.19	83.72	78.6
42	Taiwan	80.94	83.88	78.09
43	Kuwait	80.78	82.15	79.63
44	Oman	80.45	82.21	78.95
45	Czechia	80.11	82.85	77.35
46	Panama	79.96	82.84	77.1
47	Albania	79.95	81.74	78.12
48	United States	79.61	82.11	77.22
49	Estonia	79.48	83.3	75.35
50	Saudi Arabia	79.19	81.51	77.56
51	New Caldnia	79.07	81.53	76.63
52	Poland	78.98	82.61	75.31
53	Croatia	78.92	81.95	75.8
54	Slovakia	78.65	81.84	75.41
55	Uruguay	78.45	82.17	74.59
56	Cuba	78.45	80.84	76.06
57	China	78.37	81.25	75.65
58	BosniaHerz.	78.24	81.23	74.88
59	Jordan	78.13	80.46	76.06
60	Peru	78.12	80.45	75.82
61	Colombia	78.09	80.77	75.36
62	Lebanon	78.08	79.99	76.02
63	Iran	78.05	79.99	76.22
64	Antigua Bar	77.94	80.6	74.93
65	Sri Lanka	77.85	80.9	74.65
66	Turkey	77.82	80.82	74.94
67	Ecuador	77.76	80.46	75.08
68	Argentina	77.69	80.16	75.14
69	Nth Maced	77.68	79.83	75.41
70	Guam	77.63	81.74	73.89
71	Montenegro	77.43	80.6	74.12
72	FrenchGuian	77.37	80.3	74.52
73	Hungary	77.33	80.46	74.07
74	Curaçao	77.17	81.1	72.87
75	Serbia	77.14	80.35	73.89
76	Malaysia	76.99	79.67	74.63
77	Tunisia	76.9	79.5	74.34
78	Thailand	76.83	81.17	72.65
79	Algeria	76.69	78.13	75.3
80	Aruba	76.64	79.06	73.99
81	Barbados	76.49	78.91	73.93
82	Latvia	76.48	80.72	71.94
85	Lithuania	76.32	80.92	71.61
86	Romania	76.25	79.82	72.74
87	Brazil	76.2	79.3	73.14
88	Armenia	76.01	79.73	71.76
89	Bulgaria	75.96	79.51	72.52
90	US Virgin Is	75.92	81.6	70.95
91	Morocco	75.68	77.96	73.54
92	Brunei	75.67	77.9	73.65
93	Grenada	75.52	78.64	72.67
94	Mexico	75.45	78.17	72.63
95	Mauritius	75.27	78.5	72.28
96	Nicaragua	75.27	77.74	72.64
97	Bangladesh	75.19	76.94	73.55
98	Vietnam	74.88	79.49	70.23
99	Ukraine	74.86	79.54	69.99
100	Bahamas	74.86	78.46	71.21
101	Georgia	74.82	79.36	69.93
102	Belarus	74.79	79.37	69.94
104	Kazakhstan	74.67	78.65	70.43
105	Paraguay	74.11	77.22	71.14
106	DomincnRep	73.99	77.23	70.79
109	North Korea	73.86	76.02	71.66
112	Russia	73.52	79.32	67.69
115	Libya	73.19	75.26	71.23
117	St. Palestine	73.1	76.86	69.72
118	India	72.48	74.13	70.95
119	Syria	72.99	75.42	70.58
120	Guatemala	72.89	75.21	70.57
121	Venezuela	72.84	76.82	69.05
122	Uzbekistan	72.66	75.7	69.68
123	Iraq	72.53	74.33	70.59

Apologies for the other (mainly tiny) countries that I ran out of space for.

Our World In Data explains a problem. The term "life expectancy" refers to the number of years a person can expect to live. By definition, life expectancy is based on an estimate of the average age that members of a particular population group will be when they die. In practice, however, things are often more complicated. 

An important distinction is the difference between cohort and period life expectancy. The cohort life expectancy is the average life length of a particular group of individuals born in a given year. When we can track a group of people born in a particular year, many decades ago, and observe the exact date in which each one of them died, we can calculate this cohort's life expectancy by simply calculating the average of the ages of all members when they died.

You can think of period life expectancy in a particular year as the age a person born in that year would expect to live if the average age of death did not change over their lifetime. It is of course not possible to know this metric before all members of the cohort have died. Imagine that every over-65 year old in USA died in the 3 years of  Covid, the average age of the U.S population would have gone down marginally by 2024; new-born babies born in 2024 would not have been impacted by the epidemic. Imagine, however if every 18-25 year old male died in the Ukrainian War, the country's average age would have fallen severely. And since women live longer on average than men in every country, killing mainly men in war would make the gender difference even more in favour of (lonely) women.

Women enjoying their retirement together

Cascade Living Group

Because of that, statisticians commonly track members of a particular cohort and predict the average death age for them using a combination of observed mortality rates for past years and projections about mortality rates for future years.

Gloral average life expectancy rose from 32 in 1900.. to 73 in 2023

Our World in Data