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Bourgeois civilisation has borne all its luxuriant fruits
Bourgeois civilisation has borne all its luxuriant fruits. America has taken first place among the free and educated countries in the level of development of the productive forces of united human labour, in the use of machinery and of all the wonders of modern technology. At the same time America
NB! · Moscow · Museums · Heritage · People
Memorial plaque to Irina Antonova on the house in Maly Trekhsvyatitelsky Lane, where Irina Alexandrovna lived from 1942 to 1982
London · Monarchies · Society · People
Winston Churchill had been a Member of Parliament, Home Secretary and First Lord of the Admiralty when Prince Edward was still a child, later Colonial Secretary and Chancellor of the Exchequer, and by the time of his reign he had already spent several yea
Winston Churchill had been a Member of Parliament, Home Secretary and First Lord of the Admiralty when Prince Edward was still a child, later Colonial Secretary and Chancellor of the Exchequer, and by the time of his reign he had already spent several years in political isolation. He returned to
Archive · Monarchies · People
Investiture of Edward VIII as Prince of Wales on 13 July 1911 and his later titles
The future King Edward VIII of England was invested as Prince of Wales on 13 July 1911, at the age of 17. The eldest great-grandson of Queen Victoria in the direct male line, he bore this title from 1910 to 1936, then for 10 months was king, after the
Archive · Cinema · Observations · People · Humour
Napoleon's signature as Bonaparte changed over the years up to his exile on Saint Helena
The Napoleon signature on the poster of the much-discussed film can easily be read as "Locomotive" In fact Napoleon more often signed himself Bonaparte, and at different periods of his life the signatures scarcely resemble one another. But there were locomotives too, in 1804 and 1805, for
Archive · Observations · Mores · Society
Urban legends of 1917 about syphilitic street sellers of cigarettes
Urban legends of 1917: the capital teems with street sellers of cigarettes, many of them sick soldiers, many contagious, often syphilitics, who might infect the cigarettes and sell them on. Greetings to poisoned needles, poisoned apples, infected envelopes, the spraying of viruses and dangerous perfumes. A hundred years have passed,
Books · New York · Society · People
Joseph Brodsky answers Kundera in defence of Dostoevsky in The New York Times Book Review
In 1968 Milan Kundera refused to stage Dostoevsky in the theatre, and seventeen years later wrote about it in the essay "Preface to a Variation", in which he speaks openly of his dislike of Dostoevsky and of the entry of Soviet troops into Czechoslovakia. "I reread The
NB! · Architecture · Faith · Heritage · Paris
Installation of oak roof beams at Notre-Dame de Paris, delivered from Brittany along the Seine
The long-awaited assembly of the timber roof structure of Notre-Dame de Paris. Beams from 200-year-old Breton oaks were delivered along the Seine, by the same route as during the original construction
Observations · Ethnography
The Orok language of the Tungus-Manchu group and 295 Oroks in Russia as of 2010
A rarity indeed. Today the speakers of the Orok language number only a few dozen. The Oroks are a small indigenous people of the north. How small? According to the 2010 census, Russia had 295 Oroks. The Orok language belongs to the Tungusic (Manchu-Tungus) language group. Not to be
NB! · The East · Observations · Ethnography
Toy camel on wheels made in Morocco for the French market in the early twentieth century
A toy camel on wheels from Morocco, early twentieth century. Made for the French market. A magnificent camel!
Art · Observations · Humour
The mood for doing nothing, lounging about and watching box sets
French ceramicist Maturin Méheut, 1925