Thanks to her industry, enthusiasm, and warmth, and the devotion she inspired, her work reached a wide range of people in Australia and Britain, and she never lost her vision of the role art history could play in giving people an understanding of both present and past.Born Joan Lyndon in Sydney, in 1938, she went to school at Somerville House in Brisbane and then studied English at the University of Queensland. It was after her marriage in 1960 to James Kerr, then employed by Qantas, that she became increasingly interested in art history. Qantas posted Jim to London and it was there in the mid-1960s that the couple attended the lectures given at Birkbeck College by Nikolaus Pevsner, who considered them among the most stimulating students he ever had.Few people who met this contrasting couple, Jim immensely tall and reserved and Joan small, smiling, extrovert and dressed with an endearing indifference, will have forgotten them.Exposure to Pevsner reinforced their interest in the rich but neglected architectural heritage of Australia. On their return home they campaigned against the needless destruction of Victorian buildings in Sydney from their period house in Cremorne.In the summer of 1972 Jim enrolled on a postgraduate course in conservation studies which was being launched by the Institute of Advanced Architectural Studies at York University. Eleanor Joan Lyndon, art historian: born Sydney, New South Wales 21 February 1938; Research Professor in Art History and Theory, College of Fine Arts, University of New South Wales 1994-97, Visiting Professor 2003-04; Professor and Convener of Program in Australian Art, Centre for Cross-Cultural Research, ANU 1997-2001; married 1960 James Kerr (one son, one daughter); died Sydney 22 February 2004. More must be done to ensure that challenging gender stereotypes is written into all education policy, so boys and girls can reach their full potential.”. Others suffer problems more quietly than boys and so don’t receive help and support.”Boys are encouraged to be tougher and stand up for themselves: behaviour which is often discouraged in girls.”Dr Katherine Rake, the director of the Fawcett Society, will add: “The split between girls and boys subjects remains of great concern.

“At A-level twice as many girls choose English, biology and social studies and more boys choose mathematics and physics – and again the pattern continues into higher education choices.”International Women’s Day is the perfect day to celebrate the academic and career achievements of girls and women but we must not underestimate the number of girls who do not reach their full potential Some girls’ self-esteem is affected from an early age. In vocational qualifications, girls opted for health and social care while very few chose engineering.”This carries on through school,” he will say. “People who know her have invited her out, and either got no response or have been told she does not want to go out,” said one friend of the family who wished to remain nameless. “One or two have been over to see her, but that’s it.”She never much cared for Toronto society anyway. Until three years ago, the Blacks would throw giant Christmas parties at the mansion. Even they stopped after the last party, when a minor Canadian film director showed his gratitude by making fun of it afterwards in a Toronto newspaper For Amiel that was too much and she vowed, never again.

She is considered far more thin-skinned than her husband when people are beastly.How she must be suffering now. Another friend says the couple seem almost overwhelmed if any of their old circle take the trouble to offer support. They have been devastated by many of their old circle who join the chorus of unflattering commentaries about them in newspapers. On top of that, Lord Black is said to feel luck dealt him a very unfortunate hand when Judge Strine was selected to oversee the trial.That the once-golden couple should be suffering cold-shoulder treatment in Toronto is not surprising to many. “Toronto has still got this old Presbyterian notion that you don’t flaunt your wealth and that you should live a reasonably modest lifestyle even when you can afford a lot better,” one old associate said “It is no wonder Conrad is suffering. Plus there is the sense that Barbara turned her back on her Canadian friends when she and Conrad made it big in London and New York.”Nor has anyone forgotten how quickly he shed his Canadian citizenship for a British peerage.

“People in Toronto have been even more gleeful about his demise than people in London.” But the worst for the Blacks is the knowledge that people are not just avoiding them but laughing at them too The Canadian Club gibes surely hurt more than most. It was not just that those who came to hear Ms Munk talk included some of the most mighty of Toronto society.That she of all people should be making hay of their troubles will have been all the more hurtful, because her father, Peter Munk, one of Canada’s most successful tycoons, was once among Lord Black’s closest friends.Lord Black knows the lampooning of his character has run riot. He said as much in a defamation lawsuit he filed against directors of Hollinger in Ontario just a few weeks ago. He was fighting back, he said, because he found himself “pilloried and mocked mercilessly” around the world. Around the world, and even in the city that he once called home, as well.Additional reporting by Hugh Winsor in Ottawa. BBC Radio 2, the country’s biggest radio network, yesterday attempted to lure more young listeners to the station by offering jobs to a series of former Radio 1 presenters. There is a clear link here with homophobic bullying where boys in particular are exposed to bullying if their manner is not quite ‘tough’ enough for the prevailing male culture.”He will add that advertisements aimed at boys are “noisy and action packed with powerful images”.”It is unsurprising that overall children’s perception is that it is better to be a boy,” he will say.