The Banolians 2 Volume Slipcase

The grand old Melbourne home Banole has long gone, and with it the way of life of a prosperous colonial Anglo-Australian family. I have read many family histories and sagas. The Banolians is unlike any, except War And Peace perhaps. This is a story on a grand scale by a witty yet scrupulous historian who has immersed herself in the secrets, successes, and travails of an exceptionally talented family spanning two centuries. Their lives and adventures transport us from the Tsar’s Russia to every corner of the world.

— (Dr) Andrew Lemon AM FRHSV

The Banolians is a family history that speaks to today’s reader, taking them on a journey from 1820 and the upper reaches of European nobility, through poverty, grief, and separation from Estonia, England & Ireland to Australia. The story then returns to England in the ‘Edwardian Summer’ before World War 1, including tennis at Wimbledon, student life at Cambridge, and on to the trenches of Europe, while family members wait anxiously in Melbourne.

Starting with the love affair between the Estonian Baroness Amalie Christine and her doctor, Ferdinand Jencken – and their elopement – the story is built from personal diaries, letters, and memoirs. They describe not only the perils and setbacks, but also astonishing changes of fortunes, including their rescue by a complete stranger, who becomes the family’s benefactor.

Spanning three generations, readers have a ringside seat to the spiritualism movement of the nineteenth century, the hardships of life in colonial Sydney, the world of ‘Marvellous Melbourne’ and its attendant economic crash, the perils of sea travel, and the many small, personal distresses that family life brings. The Banolians is frequently stranger than fiction, as life so often is.