August news

Another great review this week. Thank you to the National Trust (Australia) and to reviewer Dr Robyn Taylor (NT quarterly magazine, ‘Trust News’ August 2015).

‘This beautifully illustrated book is a joy to read’.
It ‘has a different approach’ that ‘brings psychological depth to the main characters and greater poignancy’.

And thank you to the Biodiversity Heritage Library, one of my favourite online browsing places. A fascinating article popped up on Facebook this morning.

My own research showed that the Leach family were close friends of the Kennedys and the reason Georgiana met her future husband. John Molloy and Jonathan Leach fought together in the Peninsular Wars. The other two brothers, George (a lawyer) and William Elford Leach were also close friends with Georgiana’s parents and she knew them from childhood as house guests in her home near Carlisle. William Elford Leach was a very talented zoologist whose work influenced Darwin, but he died tragically at a young age. Georgiana’s youngest brother George was entrusted with some of Leach’s precious specimens. You can read about this on Page 111 of ‘Georgiana Molloy: the Mind that Shines’ and if you’d like to know more or to see images of the beautifully hand-coloured pages of Leach’s most well-known publication, here’s the link. Thank you BHL!

https://www.facebook.com/BioDivLibrary/posts/10152889273631566