Solzhenitsyn's 1970 Nobel Prize and two Time covers before he received it

On 8 October 1970 Alexandr Solzhenitsyn was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature "for the ethical force with which he has pursued the indispensable traditions of Russian literature". Alexandr Isayevich would receive the prize itself only in December 1974, after his expulsion from the Soviet Union. It is curious that Solzhenitsyn appeared on the cover of Time before the award, in September 1968, and then a second time, again before its formal presentation, in February 1974. The first Time cover story, in 1968, quotes "The First Circle" and likens Solzhenitsyn to Tolstoy, Gorky and Pasternak, as a writer who had defied the masters of the Kremlin. The second tells of a large, red-bearded man of 55 stepping out of the first-class cabin of a Tu-154 at Frankfurt am Main airport: Solzhenitsyn appears here as a man of letters in exile

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September digest: archaeological finds, exhibitions, museums, theatre and the Church

In the finale of the Strugatskys' Roadside Picnic, the Golden Ball is told: "Happiness for everybody, free, and let nobody go away unsatisfied!" I do not promise to offend nobody, but the digest really does come free of charge. So, here is the main business of the

Frederic Leighton

Frederic Leighton. “Daedalus and Icarus”, 1869 Daedalus warns his son not to climb too high: the heat of the sun may melt the wax, but Icarus is already gazing into the distance, and the lamentations of a foolish old man interest him not in the least

Solzhenitsyn's 1970 Nobel Prize and two Time covers before he received it

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September digest: archaeological finds, exhibitions, museums, theatre and the Church

Frederic Leighton

Attempts to resolve the problems of many years of uncontrolled mass migration

Characters from Gogol's "Petersburg Tales" on the pedestal of the monument to Nikolai Gogol on Nikitsky Boulevard, photograph of the 1960s