Observations · Mores · Society
I do not usually comment on shameful stories like the one that took place in a Georgian hotel. But for the completeness of this disgraceful drama it must be observed that the word “client” originally denoted a person under protection. The Latin cliens goes back to the verb cluere, “to
NB! · Books · Moscow · Humour
Quotations from Great Men. The Lenin Library
NB!
Archive · London · Pop Culture
On 28 July 1968 the Beatles, instead of working in the studio, staged a spontaneous shoot at various places around the city, with no script, no route and hardly any preparation. The aim was to recover from the gruelling recording of their ninth album and at last to document new
Aristocracy · Observations · Education · Pop Culture
Just learned that Tilda Swinton and Diana Spencer were in the same class at West Heath Girls School, a boarding school near Sevenoaks in Kent. Tilda Swinton remembered boarding school as a very lonely place. West Heath Girls School was a prestigious, though not first-rank, private school for girls.
Archive · Art · People
Training Postponed. A photograph by the American photographer Ray Fisher (1924-2020), taken in the second half of the twentieth century. Fisher was known above all as a photojournalist and the author of portraits of politicians, musicians and public figures, yet his studio work demonstrates a different approach
Coming Up · Faith · Museums · Science · Paris
At the Paul Éluard Museum of Art and History in Saint-Denis, housed within the walls of a former Carmelite convent of 1625, 400 metres from the Basilica of Saint-Denis, the burial place of the kings of France, the exhibition "Believing and Healing. And Deliver Us from Evil&
Faith · Observations · Society
Leo XIV has recorded a video message to the young Catholics of a small Andean community in Peru, telling them: "The Church needs your holy rebellion" But not a rebellion against what you may have thought. Rather, against the "sofa youth", benumbed and comfortably settled in
Archaeology · Architecture · Faith · The East · Heritage
Speaking of the Syro-Hittite Iron Age temple of Ain Dara in Syria, it is famous first and foremost not as the closest known architectural parallel to the biblical Temple of Solomon, though that is a fact, but for the gigantic footprints in its stone. The prints are a little
Archaeology · The East · Heritage · Society
A survey of 200 archaeological sites in Syria has established that in 2015-2025 59% of them were looted, 118 out of 200, almost five times more than in 2011-2016, when 26 of the 200 sites suffered. Traditionally, looting at these places means pits dug by hand. But they
Art · Observations · New York · Humour
Saw a great big station, Stretched and said: "What station is this? Dibuny or Yamskaya?" And from the platform they said: "This is the city of New York. This is the city of New York, they say." Literal translation And, accordingly, a mosaic in the New
Art · Observations
It seems I have a new favourite contemporary artist: Markus Matthias Krüger, the German reformer of academic landscape painting, born in 1981 in Gardelegen. Krüger received his professional training at the Academy of Visual Arts in Leipzig (the Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst), under Professors Annette Schröder and Ulrich Hachulla.