Cinema · Books · Mores

Golden Globe winning 1991 film about escaping the city, based on Elizabeth von Arnim's novel

Gender of the Day: Enchanted April. Strange as it may seem, gloom, private misfortunes and dramas retreat into the background with the coming of the sun. Whoever you may be, a disenchanted madonna or an elderly prude, a deserted society beauty or an ecstatic little ingénue, April is always a

Books · Moscow · Observations · Mores · Saint Petersburg

Kofemania on Bolshaya Nikitskaya and the place of coffee in old Russia and Russian literature

The much-discussed “Kofemania” and its clientele are not merely a portrait of our times. Whenever I visit one of my favourite branches, the one on Bolshaya Nikitskaya, I find myself, for some reason, transported into the atmosphere of the celebrated nineteenth-century Petersburg coffee house of “Wolff and Béranger”

NB! · Faith · Art · Heritage · Paris

One of the Treasures of Notre-Dame de Paris, the Marvellous Madonna and Child, a Fourteenth-Century Sculpture, Safe and Sound

Books · Museums · New York · Pop Culture

Alice Vanderbilt’s “Electric Light” dress and the Vanderbilt lady in “The Twelve Chairs”

The Twelve Chairs mentions a haughty Vanderbilt lady from a French fashion magazine. “The glossy photograph showed the daughter of the American billionaire Vanderbilt in an evening gown. There were furs and feathers, silk and pearls, a cut of extraordinary lightness and a dizzying coiffure.” In other photographs the Vanderbilt

Architecture · Faith · Heritage · Paris

Relics, artworks, bells and rose windows of Notre-Dame during the fire

The fate of many of Notre-Dame's treasures remains unknown. A piece of the Holy Cross and the holy nails A fragment of the Cross on which Jesus was crucified, and one of the nails from the Crucifixion. A painting of Thomas Aquinas A canvas of the seventeenth

NB! · Architecture · Faith · Heritage · Society · Paris

Yesterday afternoon the French Minister of Culture tweeted photographs of some of the valuable objects kept in the Cathedral being removed for the duration of the repairs

Yesterday afternoon the French Minister of Culture tweeted photographs of some of the valuable objects kept in the Cathedral being removed for the duration of the repairs. The tweet was posted at 14:41, five hours before the fire

Architecture · Faith · Heritage · Paris

So, what became of the treasures of Notre-Dame de Paris?

So, what became of the treasures of Notre-Dame de Paris? What has survived? The Holy Crown of Thorns It came to France as a gift to Louis IX in 1238. The Crown of Thorns, with several thorns removed (and dispatched to various corners of the world), is kept in

Façade of Soissons Cathedral with a single tall tower, a rose window and pointed portals under an overcast sky.

NB! · Architecture · Faith · Heritage

Soissons Cathedral after restoration, with one tower as since the 14th century

This is how the Soissons Cathedral, restored after its destruction, looks today. Yes, with a single tower: that is how it had stood since the fourteenth century, the second tower simply never being completed.

Architecture · Faith · Heritage

Saint-Gervais-et-Saint-Protais, or Soissons Cathedral: one of the largest Gothic cathedrals of France, comparable in size to Notre-Dame de Paris and the cathedrals of Reims and Amiens

116 metres in length, against 130 for Notre-Dame de Paris; height under the vault of the choir: 31, against 33.5 for Notre-Dame; height of the tower: 66, against 69. The church was wholly destroyed during the First World War; in 1914 it literally lay in ruins. The

Architecture · Faith · Observations · Heritage · Paris

Fire during repairs at Saint-Sulpice church in Paris damages doors and façade

Incidentally, exactly a month ago, on 18 March, another very significant church in Paris, Saint-Sulpice, caught fire, also during restoration work. Fortunately, the blaze was quickly put out; the doors, part of the façade and part of the interior decoration suffered, and the church is now being restored. What

NB! · Museums · Observations · Nature

A narwhal tusk from the Anatomy Museum of the University of Edinburgh: a marvel, is it not?

Books · Observations · Mores · Humour

There is a well-worn quotation about how Tolstoy created the image of Natasha Rostova: "I took Tanya, ground her up with Sonya, and out came Natasha"

Tanya is Tatyana Andreyevna Bers-Kuzminskaya, Lev Nikolayevich's sister-in-law, who also lived at Yasnaya Polyana; Sonya is his wife, Sofya Andreyevna. Agreed, it is hard, even with the greatest effort, to believe that these women could have been the prototypes of Natasha. For my part, I

Alexandr Radayev