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I wondered why my father, who clearly loved Indonesia, was bitter about the circumstances in which his three years ended in 1949. At home in New Zealand, we children gained a very romanticised view about his action there. We knew our Dad as adventurous, impulsive, reliable but casual. Photographs of his time in the Dutch East Indies showed a handsome man in uniform, a muscled paratrooper with a sporting bent; and what does a paratrooper do, but jump out of aeroplanes, the

The Café Coster in Rijnsburg is the site of the very first Flora flower auction in Rijnsburg; Royal FloraHolland is now a multi-million dollar business, a co-operative that has become the pride of Dutch global commerce. Café Coster was owned by my great-grandfather, Herman Coster. The physical evidence for it has now disappeared. I once asked my mother, for what reason I cannot recall, what the history of the name Coster was? Something to do with the wine trade, she s

Leiden Christmas 2025 It's a student city, then and today; you can feel the energy that students lend to the place as you walk to your accomodation from Leiden Centraal Station; at the early dusk in the streetside bars, during daylight on market days. And of course, the light of the canals reflects the lighting of Christmas. The story of how Leiden came to host students begins with a siege. In 1574, the city-state was surrounded by the Spanish troops of King Phillip II and s

At the turn of the 20th century, my grandfather (on my mother's side) was brought up in a 'weeshuis' in Leiden. After his mother died, he and a brother and a sister were looked after there until he was around 18 years old. That was all I knew until I started a little research, as you do. I included what I knew of his time there in my book Crossed Keys and Coffee Spoons. The orphan's chronicle felt a little thin. I wanted to know more. In December 2025, my cousin Hanneke