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Huib Billiet Adriaansen wrote an exciting book about the shared history of Cuba and Belgium since the early sixteenth century.

Review of Sheila D. Muller's 'Dutch Art. An Encyclopedia' (New York/London, 1997)

About MoMU, the new Fashion Museum in Antwerp: a beautiful and interesting museum, which should however refrain from verbal pomposity in its communication if it really wants to be an accessible exhibition and information centre for a wide r...

A regular feature comprising short reviews of a selection of socio-cultural events and works recently published in the Low Countries.

Cars. There are too many of them. An account of how the automobile conquered the landscape and how the motorist became king. The king of the road has become a prisoner: the illusion of the freedom of driving hardly exists any more. Nor does...

After dEUS every pop and rock musician in Flanders knows that you can devote yourself one hundred percent to your art, but international fame and fortune will probably never come your way. That doesn't stop young, and rather less young, boy...

For writer Paul Binding Abraham Ortelius is first and foremost an artist, with his atlas (the Theatrum, first published in 1570) as a very special work of art and an enduring benchmark. It remains imperishable as an introduction to ‘the big...

A regular feature comprising short reviews of a selection of socio-cultural events and works recently published in the Low Countries.

Cornucopia. In Flanders fields Belgian waffles and Ghent chicken casserole are being served. Too much is never enough. The author serves the reader each letter of the alphabet and paints a picture of waiters shrouded in monk's habits, waist...

A sad anniversary. 1915 was the year of the first gas attack and of the Second Battle of Ypres, but it was also the year that John McCrae wrote his poem ‘In Flanders Fields'. However, the Great War was about more than gas attacks and the de...

Four Flemish and Dutch recipes to try at home

A regular feature comprising short reviews of a selection of socio-cultural events and works recently published in the Low Countries

A regular feature comprising short reviews of a selection of socio-cultural events and works recently published in the Low Countries.

The author doesn't need a reason for not travelling. Just as the reader doesn't need one when he decides he will go and pack his suitcases. This article is not a diatribe against tourism – and most certainly not against travelling. Ad Vinge...

A regular feature comprising short reviews of a selection of socio-cultural events and works recently published in the Low Countries.

Politicians in Belgium as well as the Netherlands are often quite keen to promote the concept of the self-sufficient citizen, whereby people are largely responsible for their own welfare. Yes, there is a safety net, but they should not make...

A regular feature comprising short reviews of a selection of socio-cultural events and works recently published in the Low Countries.

About love and lust in the contemporary Low Countries. There's no heart without loins and no loins without heart, and just think what your head can get up to. Love is a battlefield, lust is a struggle in which your body and soul are at stak...

A 'tour d'horizon' of well-being and happiness in the Low Countries. Welfare may be a subject of ongoing concern, happiness should not. Happiness exists precisely by grace of the imperfection of our existence, in which we are, at best, caug...

‘Think again!' is the answer to the question in the subtitle of this article. There's plenty more to tell about water: Dutch naval heroes, Prince Willem-Alexander as a true waterlander, Manneke Pis and Hans Brinker, Delta and Sigma Plans, t...

The Department of International Relations of the Ministry of Welfare, Health and Cultural Affairs in the Netherlands has published a series of booklets in English called 'Dutch Arts'. The aim of these publications is to give foreign readers...

At the translators' residences in Amsterdam and Leuven, translators of Dutch or Flemish literature can enjoy a brief taste of the cultural atmosphere

From 16 October 1996 to 19 January 1997 the National Gallery in London held the exhibition 'Rubens' Landscapes', presenting a rare overview of this lesser-known segment of the oeuvre of this famous painter.

About the still controversial language issue within the European Union, based on reading Werner Duthoy's ‘Het Nederlands in de instellingen van de Europese Gemeenschap (The Hague, 1993, 2nd. ed.).

Review of ‘The Dedalus Book of Dutch Fantasy' (ed. Richard Huijing; Sawtry, 1993), a collection that functions as a peep show of the Dutch literary imagination.

1994 marked a milestone in Dutch Studies in the United Kingdom: it was precisely 75 years since the foundation of the chairs in Dutch Language and Literature and in Dutch History at the University of London.

The Atlas Van Stolk collection, housed in the Shielandshuis in Rotterdam, is a unique assemblage of drawings, prints, photos and posters. From 4 February to 28 May 1995, fifty of the prints from this collection were exhibited under the titl...

In January 1996 the ALCS was officially founded during a two-day meeting in Cambridge. The Association for Low Countries Studies aims to combine the forces of all people from the English-speaking academic community in Europe with a common s...

Ostend is a phoenix. Every town has periods of prosperity and decay in its history, but the history of this Flemish coastal town is indisputably a remarkable story, with many ups and downs. This portrait of past and present shows that conte...

Review of 'Flemish Illuminated Manuscripts 1475-1550' (ed. Maurits Smeyers & Jan van der Stock; Ghent, 1996).

Review of 'Vantage Points. Festschrift for Johan P. Snapper' (Lanham, MD, 1996)

Review of A.L. Dierick's 'The Ghent Altarpiece' (Ghent, 1996)

In Edgar Goedleven's book ‘The Grand' Place in Brussels. Centre of 500 Years of History' (Tielt, 1993) random pictures are used to provide an undoubtedly incomplete but always fascinating account of the historical significance of the Brusse...

Review of Earle H. Waugh's 'Dissonant Worlds. Roger Vandesteene among the Cree' (Waterloo, ON, 1996)

Review of William Z. Shetter's 'The Netherlands in Perspective. The Dutch Way of Organizing a Society and its Setting' (Utrecht, 1997)

In 'Holland Mania: The Unknown Dutch Period in American Art and Culture' Annette Stott discusses a range of aspects and manifestations of the Holland Mania which possessed the US between 1880 and about 1920. She also mentions some Dutch inf...

A regular feature comprising short reviews of a selection of socio-cultural events and works recently published in the Low Countries.

The author recounts the history of anatomical studies in the Low Countries. This article discusses both the radical scientific approach of Andreas Vesalius and the seventeenth-century anatomical pieces of Rembrandt and others.

A regular feature comprising short reviews of a selection of socio-cultural events and works recently published in the Low Countries.

Margaretha Geertruida Zelle was born in Leeuwarden in 1876 but became infamous as Mata Hari, exotic, mistress extraordinaire and possible superspy. Was she indeed as deceitful and voluptuous as often described? Lots of questions and only so...

A portrait of a stubborn grand old man in Flemish theatre. Both as writer and director Tone Brulin shows himself to be a man who has made the world his sphere of operations.

A regular feature comprising short reviews of a selection of socio-cultural events and works recently published in the Low Countries.

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