Aristocracy · Cinema · Books
Remembering the magnificent 1963 screen adaptation of Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa's novel "The Leopard", on the life of the aristocratic Salina family amid the political and social upheavals of the Risorgimento in Italy. Civil war is breaking out in Italy. On one side stand the republicans,
Aristocracy · Archive · Monarchies · Mores · Saint Petersburg
Interior of the study of Ekaterina Mikhailovna Dolgorukaya, the first Most Serene Princess Yuryevskaya, in her house on the English Embankment in Saint Petersburg. Photograph of 1876. Princess Ekaterina Mikhailovna Dolgorukova (Dolgorukaya), from 1880 Most Serene Princess Yuryevskaya (1847 to 1922), was the second, morganatic, wife of Emperor Alexander II;
Books · Monarchies · Rome · Humour
What do you want? A republic? The republic was a fraud. Do you want civil wars again? Do you want famine in the streets once more? Do you want the barbarians to come knocking at your doors? You bawl yourselves hoarse in vain. Go home! Rabble! And you call yourselves
Books · Society · Humour
The Primus stove is very Troubled, Ailing with something, Dissatisfied, Though he – a Primus – is first-rate. – Ah, in my grief I'll fling myself into the stove, Dash, Fling, Topple over… Why am I only a Primus, And not a "Ford". Literal translation In the end
Architecture · Observations · New York · Society · Humour
Trump has berated the UN for pocketing several billion on renovating the very building that houses its Secretariat. One has the feeling that the embezzlement of repair funds is the most elementary corruption practice in the world, running from the endless levies at school for redecorating a classroom to, as
Architecture · Heritage · Mores
A protected zone has been established around the Mamontov dacha in the Moscow Region. The Mamontovs were the first builders of dachas along the Yaroslavl line. At the turn of the 1850s and 1860s, Mikhail Nikolayevich Mamontov built a two-storey dacha on a plot of leased land in the
Monarchies · Observations · Mores · Society
The King of Britain has met the oldest of his subjects, 116-year-old Ethel Caterham. I sometimes remark on this gesture of British rulers: attention and respect towards the elderly, with special meetings for veterans, visits to the long-lived, and congratulatory messages. Much of this exists in our
Cinema · Books · Pop Culture · Humour
The most interesting historical angle is a view of the universe in which Bulgakov's (let us not forget this, for all the charm of Leonid Gaidai) inventor-engineer Timofeev, and Nikolai Ivanovich rather than Alexander Sergeyevich, upon inventing the time machine, meets the Briton Doctor Who. Naturally, it
Archaeology · Monarchies · Observations
NB! · Observations · Pop Culture · Humour
Art · Moscow · Museums · Observations
A drawing by the Greek artist Alekos Fassianos recalled Anna Romanova's exhibition "Argonauts of the Underground" at the Voznesensky Centre, with its linear graphic art of the 1950s and 60s, featuring works by Soosteri, Sobolev, Yakovlev, Sidur, Matisse and Picasso. The exhibition was three years ago,
Faith · The East · Books · Observations · Science · People · Humour
René Guénon writes that "intellect" once meant the perception of transcendent realities, and introduces the Sanskrit term buddhi, all but forgotten in the West. He explains that buddhi is the faculty of glimpsing another world, whose traces appear in the soul as intellectual intuitions. Apparently, the term is