Aristocracy · Interviews · Education · People

I drew a very lucky ticket in my fate, because at the end of 1944, while the war was still going on, I was sent to the Moscow Choir School

I drew a very lucky ticket in my fate, because at the end of 1944, while the war was still going on, I was sent to the Moscow Choir School. This was preceded by the wartime years and then a rather painful evacuation. My father had already sent my papers

NB! · Observations

As in Moscow

NB! · Moscow · Society

Pavements Washed with Shampoo: Now in Moscow Too

Faith · Books · Observations

Reflection on the origin of adversity and light from darkness, quoting Isaiah

Who can speak of joy without having known pain, or of peace without having seen and known strife? At dawn the day is parted from the night, and each is known in its own nature and strength, for without contrast nothing is revealed. No image appears in a clear mirror

Open old book with an engraving: a dove in a ring of flames, two doves with an olive branch and a letter, an ark on the water and a town on the shore.

Archive · Faith · Art

Illustration “Send-Briefe” from a work by Jacob Boehme, known to Russian Freemasons

In essence, what we have before us is an eighteenth-century depiction of the interaction between non-human intelligence, or superintelligence, and mortal men. An illustration from Jakob Böhme, the German mystical and theosophical symbolist of the seventeenth century, well known to the Russian Freemasons

An elderly man in a long coat kneels in prayer at a prie-dieu inside a stone church.

Faith · Observations · Society · People

Charles de Gaulle at prayer in a church in 1960

Europe will be all right when we see its rulers at prayer in church, and not at pop concerts. It would be as well, of course, if they looked like Charles de Gaulle in church in 1960

Coming Up · Art · Saint Petersburg

Exhibition of 80 works on collecting and Jung's shadow runs until 12 October

On 31 August the Anna Nova gallery in Saint Petersburg will open "Trauma and Rebirth", a large-scale exhibition from the contemporary art collection of the patron Zoya Galeyeva. The concept of the exhibition rests on the psychoanalytic theory of Carl Gustav Jung and his notion of the

Architecture · Faith · The East · Heritage · Society

Authorities confirm Armenian cathedral in Ani will become a mosque after restoration

It is reported that the Armenian Cathedral of the Holy Virgin in Ani, the capital of medieval Bagratid Armenia, in present-day eastern Turkey on the border with Armenia, is to be turned into a mosque. The cathedral has enormous historical and symbolic significance for Armenians. The thousand-year-old

Gilded carved altar with columns decorated with grapevines beneath the white vaults of the cathedral, photographed from below.

Architecture · Faith · Art

Carved and gilded altar in the Cathedral of Saint Peter in Malmö

Behind the most sumptuous Baroque carving lie the most ordinary painted boards. The altarpiece of St Peter's Church in Malmö

Archive · In the Press · Mores · Pop Culture

American women in 1916 and the fashion for dresses with backs bared to the waist

Of late American women have been seized by a sort of décolletage mania. Evening dress has, in the shortest possible time, descended quite literally to the limit beyond which it is more than risky to go. Nor is low dress worn only at soirées and dinners: it is worn in

Engraving of townspeople looking at the sky with a moon-like disc, a vessel of water at left, children on the ground and a windmill behind.

Science · Mores · Humour

How people watched the solar eclipse of 12 August 1654

Observing a Solar Eclipse in the Seventeenth Century. On 12 August 1654, people looked at the sun through smoked glass; the more resourceful used a mirror, and the very cunning a dish or a bucket of water.

NB! · Art · Monarchies

Alexandr Radayev