NB! · Art · Museums
Alexandr Radayev
Art
Hippolyte Bellangé’s “Scene from the Napoleonic Wars” sold at auction in Vienna in 2016
Not the most typical sketch for the battle genre. This picture by the French battle painter Hippolyte Bellangé (1800-1866), "Scene from the Napoleonic Wars", seems to capture a far from joyful meeting between a convoy of civilians and a party of soldiers. The horse with a bayonet
Cinema · Books · Pop Culture
The friendship of García Márquez and Shakira and her kinship with poet Meira Del Mar
The Colombian writer Gabriel García Márquez was a close friend of the singer Shakira and admired her work, saying that the personal stamp in her music made her unlike anything else, and that Shakira performs, dances and sings with a particular sensuality that seems to have been invented by her.
Archive · Monarchies · People
Princess Elizabeth without a special title and the 2010s reform of royal succession
Ten-year-old Elizabeth plays with a dog; at this age she became first in the line of succession to the British throne. Interestingly, at that time, and right up to her accession, the eldest daughter of George VI held no title and was called simply Princess Elizabeth. The only
Archive · Books
"I am inclined to think that Tolstoy must be placed beside Shakespeare: his art is not art in the manner of Turgenev, Shakespeare or Maupassant, it is something new, and it creates deeper qualities of self-awareness and analysis"
The Nobel laureate in literature John Galsworthy, in a letter to the English translator of Russian literature Constance Garnett, who first introduced the English-speaking public to the texts of Tolstoy, Dostoevsky and Chekhov
Aristocracy · In the Press · Interviews · Monarchies
Head of the House of Habsburg calls Harry and Meghan's interview gossip in the Kronen Zeitung
The current head of the House of Habsburg, the grandson of Austria's last emperor, Charles I, 60-year-old Archduke Karl von Habsburg-Lothringen, has commented on the scandalous interview given by Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, speaking to Austria's largest newspaper, the Kronen Zeitung. He
Faith · Observations · Ethnography · Humour
Absolution prayer in the hands of the dead and a 17th-century foreigner's report on Saint Peter
That's just the sort of people we are. Saint Peter reads on a slip of paper that the departed is a Russian, and at once admits him to heaven. A modern priest reports that a note bearing the so-called prayer of absolution is placed in the hands
Archive · London · Monarchies · Mores
During the wedding of Albert Edward, Prince of Wales, the future Edward VII, to Princess Alexandra of Denmark in St George's Chapel at Windsor Castle in 1863, Queen Victoria, who had by then been in mourning for 25 years, preferred…
Observations · Mores · Humour
There Is No More Absorbing Novel Than Notes on the History of the Fatherland
There is no more absorbing novel than notes on the history of the fatherland. The wife of Grishka Otrepyev, False Dmitry I, Marina Mnishek, became so convinced that the second resurrected Dmitry was her husband, though in appearance he was not in the least like the first, that she received
Aristocracy · Monarchies · Mores · People
Norwegian-Brazilian magnate Erling Lorentzen, widower of Princess Ragnhild, has died
On 9 March, in his 98th year, Erling Sven Lorentzen, the Norwegian-Brazilian magnate and widower of Princess Ragnhild, eldest daughter of King Olav V of Norway, passed away. In his youth Lorentzen was a bodyguard, and among those he guarded was the Norwegian royal family, including Princess Ragnhild herself
Books · Observations
When the English novelist Arnold Bennett (1867-1931) was asked to write an article on the twelve best novels in world literature, he replied that all twelve had been written by Russian authors, and six of them by…
When the English novelist Arnold Bennett (1867-1931) was asked to write an article on the twelve best novels in world literature, he replied that all twelve had been written by Russian authors, and six of them came from the pen of a single man, Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev: "Virgin
Art · Books · People
When General Bonaparte told the French writer, publicist and literary salon hostess Madame de Staël that he did not like women meddling in politics, she replied: "Yes, but in a country where women have their heads cut off…
Portrait of Louise Germaine de Staël (1766-1817), painted in 1812 by Vladimir Lukich Borovikovsky, when Madame de Staël was visiting Russia and warmly supporting the struggle against Napoleon