Family happiness in the grandparents' scene from the film about Willy Wonka

I don't care for the Willy Wonka film, and I can't say what is most dreadful about it, the script, the staging, the costumes or the acting, but I sometimes recall the scene in which the grandfathers and grandmothers of the luckless boy huddle together on a single sleeping platform. That is happiness: everyone in the family alive and well and, where possible, gathered under one roof. Not a golden ticket from a lucky envelope at all. The old proverb has it right: where there's crowding, there's no grudging

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September digest: archaeological finds, exhibitions, museums, theatre and the Church

In the finale of the Strugatskys' Roadside Picnic, the Golden Ball is told: "Happiness for everybody, free, and let nobody go away unsatisfied!" I do not promise to offend nobody, but the digest really does come free of charge. So, here is the main business of the

Frederic Leighton

Frederic Leighton. “Daedalus and Icarus”, 1869 Daedalus warns his son not to climb too high: the heat of the sun may melt the wax, but Icarus is already gazing into the distance, and the lamentations of a foolish old man interest him not in the least

Family happiness in the grandparents' scene from the film about Willy Wonka

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September digest: archaeological finds, exhibitions, museums, theatre and the Church

Frederic Leighton

Attempts to resolve the problems of many years of uncontrolled mass migration

Characters from Gogol's "Petersburg Tales" on the pedestal of the monument to Nikolai Gogol on Nikitsky Boulevard, photograph of the 1960s