Leon Maesdahl

Leon Maesdahl was born and educated in the United Kingdom where he qualified in Medicine at the University of Durham and underwent further training as an anatomical pathologist. Having worked in various academic positions in the medical schools of Edinburgh, Monash University in Melbourne and Erasmus University Rotterdam, he continued to work and live in the Netherlands until retirement. Prior to retirement he returned to university as a senior student to study for a MA degree in History at Leiden concentrating on the histories of the Netherlands and the UK and specializing on their political development and colonial expansion under the flags of their two, national East India Companies. The earliest part of this era fell within the epoch usually referred to as the Early Modern period of European history, a time dominated by Spain’s world-wide, catholic, empire which included the Spanish Netherlands in Northern Europe. Consequently, this previously close government relationship between the Tudor monarchs of London and the House of Habsburg in Brussels and Iberia required several post-retirement visits to Spain on the part of the recently qualified historian. The author previously enjoyed teaching medical students, especially those in Australia and while engaged on his Iberian travels at the beginning of the millennium, he was recalled to assist former colleagues in the Medical School of the Royal Hobart Hospital of Tasmania. It was during this last period of medical work that the principal of the university’s Jane Franklin Residential College, on hearing of the author’s historical interests, offered him a single term position as the college’s ‘Writer in Residence’ which was gratefully accepted. It was during this appointment that the nascent concept of the ‘Real Trilogy’ commenced its further evolution.