Cinema · Books · Saint Petersburg · Humour
It's Professor Dowell's head! A brilliant prop from Leonid Menaker's film, based on the novel by Alexander Belyaev. The living laboratory is on display on the staircase of the main building of Lenfilm
Archive · Geography · Maps
Lamskoe vel Penschinskoe more on the map Generalis Totius Imperii Russorum of 1715: that is to say, here is the Sea of Okhotsk, which has other names too. Namely: Akiyan, Lamskoe, Kamchatskoe, Lalayskoe, Penzhinskoe, or simply Lama, the oldest of those known. Lama was what the local people, the Tungus,
NB! · Archive · Monarchies · Pop Culture
Cinema · Humour
Yet another brilliant incarnation of Gary Oldman in Francis Ford Coppola's Dracula
London · Monarchies · Observations · Society
They write that Elizabeth II meant to turn her feckless son Prince Andrew out of his house, and also that she disliked Boris Johnson and Donald Trump. Strange reading, and, as usual, on the word of unnamed sources. Ah, those masters of journalism! As for Trump, on the contrary, according
Art · Humour
A Mark Rothko painting in IKEA's corporate colours, sold for $32.5 million, has become the fourth most expensive Western work of art ever sold in Asia, at least. Which means that this year some very, very rich person will be able to claim a rather substantial tax
Art · Monarchies · Observations · People
What a Longing for a Plum! And also for forcing oneself to believe that this picture of a basket of plums was painted in 1629 by the French artist Louise Moillon! Louise Moillon won renown for her exact still lifes. In the course of her life she produced only some
NB! · Observations
NB! · Observations · Mores · Humour
Archive · Observations · Mores · Education
French schoolchildren waiting for their weekly dose of cod liver oil, 1948. Photo by Robert Doisneau. I honestly don't know whether I have a genuine memory of being given cod liver oil at nursery school too, or whether it is a memory slot imported from my parents'
Faith · Heritage · Science · Rome
For the first time in 150 years, tourists and residents of Rome can see the wooden throne of Saint Peter the Apostle, previously hidden within the Chair of Saint Peter in the apse of Saint Peter's Basilica in the Vatican. Flying to Rome at once! The relic was
Art · Museums · Heritage · People
Lotte Laserstein painted "Evening over Potsdam" in 1930, in response to the Nazi Party winning 18% of the vote at the elections. When these people came to power, Lotte, the first woman admitted to the Berlin Academy of Arts and a graduate with distinction, was persecuted as a