Books · Observations · Humour

The Lake School of poets, its name and Wordsworth, Coleridge and Southey

A Peredelkino leaflet asks: who among us does not know the Lake Poets? Still, in case there are doubters, the poetic fellowship that emerged at the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries was called the Lake School after the Lake District in the north-west of England, where the

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Ours

NB! · Pop Culture · Humour

And what will the round-earthers make of this tortoise?

NB! · Observations · Humour

And These People Will Be Judging Your Restaurant

Observations · Nature · Humour

Paranormal experts suggest a werewolf portal in Cannock Chase forest in Staffordshire

Paranormal experts say that English woodland may hide a werewolf portal. Cannock Chase in Staffordshire is known for its eerie sightings of supernatural beings, including ghosts, werewolves and the notorious “black-eyed child”. Surprised? Not in the slightest. England is as much a hub of the uncanny as Bohemia and

Marble statue of a seated goddess in a crenellated city-wall crown, holding ears of wheat, with a male figure at her feet.

NB! · Art · Museums · Observations · Rome

Statue of the Goddess Tyche as the Seleucid Capital in the Vatican Museums

I photographed this statue in the Vatican Museums some time ago because of its extraordinary crown. It turns out that this Roman copy of a Greek bronze depicts the goddess Tyche in the allegorical guise of the capital of the Seleucids. On her head sits a city wall, complete with

NB! · Observations

Good Old Versailles

Faith · The East · Cinema · Moscow · Society Pages

We begin our screening of "Little Buddha" with Karo.Art at the October Cinema Centre

We begin our screening of "Little Buddha" with Karo.Art at the October Cinema Centre. As usual, I have prepared extracts from ancient tomes for discussion after the film. We shall be talking with the artist Mikhail Rubankov. And a little later I shall invite everyone to my

Archive · Faith · Books

Claude Debussy in a 1903 letter on asceticism and cosmogonic pantheism

Naturally, I am aware of how well-founded are such aspirations and apostolic enthusiasms. Nothing is so exciting as playing at being a little Buddha: living on one egg and two glasses of water a day and giving the leavings to the poor, chewing over the endless ravings of cosmogonic

Books · Observations · Science

Instant photography since 1923, from bulky apparatus to Agfa and Polaroid

Instant photography appeared in 1923, but books of 1927 already give the word "shapshot" in the sense of "taking instant snapshots". What a swift entry of a neologism into everyday speech. Though originally this required a most cumbersome contraption, in effect a portable photographic laboratory combined

A lit icon in a wooden frame in a dark church: a saint in a cowl and white vestments holds a small icon of the Mother of God.

Faith · Art · Books · People

Pavel Florensky's reflection on the nature of the icon

Imagine that you are in a closed room, but there is a dimly lit window through which you begin to guess at the existence of another world. Pavel Florensky, reflecting on what an icon is

Observations · Nature

On 30 May 1977 the tree was struck by lightning; the plant survived and lives on

The plaque by the Roxburgh pine in the Sukhumi Botanical Garden

Alexandr Radayev