NB! · Aristocracy · Archive · London · Monarchies
Latest
Faith · Monarchies · Mores
Mothering Sunday in England and Lent in the Church of England
For the Orthodox, Lent begins tomorrow, but in the Church of England this year 14 March already falls in the middle of Lent, traditionally observed as Mothering Sunday. Mothering Sunday has been identified with the fourth Sunday of Lent in England since the seventeenth century; before that, the maternal feast
NB! · Archive · Architecture · Faith
Greek priest before the Parthenon in a photograph by Kees Scherer, mid-1960s
A Greek Orthodox priest before the Parthenon in Athens. Photograph by the Dutch photographer Kees Scherer, mid-1960s
NB!
Helmet with leopard skin and white plume in a museum display case
Art · Monarchies · Observations
Portrait of Louis Bonaparte by Charles Jalabert and the helmets of French dragoons
Napoleon's younger brother, Louis Bonaparte, in the uniform of a colonel of the 5th Dragoons. Portrait by Charles Jalabert. In the French army, the helmets of dragoon officers were adorned with a turban of leopard skin. I cannot say whether this alludes to the leopard skin fastened to
NB! · Art · Museums
Figures from an Old Barrel Organ
Art
Hippolyte Bellangé’s “Scene from the Napoleonic Wars” sold at auction in Vienna in 2016
Not the most typical sketch for the battle genre. This picture by the French battle painter Hippolyte Bellangé (1800-1866), "Scene from the Napoleonic Wars", seems to capture a far from joyful meeting between a convoy of civilians and a party of soldiers. The horse with a bayonet
Cinema · Books · Pop Culture
The friendship of García Márquez and Shakira and her kinship with poet Meira Del Mar
The Colombian writer Gabriel García Márquez was a close friend of the singer Shakira and admired her work, saying that the personal stamp in her music made her unlike anything else, and that Shakira performs, dances and sings with a particular sensuality that seems to have been invented by her.
Archive · Monarchies · People
Princess Elizabeth without a special title and the 2010s reform of royal succession
Ten-year-old Elizabeth plays with a dog; at this age she became first in the line of succession to the British throne. Interestingly, at that time, and right up to her accession, the eldest daughter of George VI held no title and was called simply Princess Elizabeth. The only
Archive · Books
"I am inclined to think that Tolstoy must be placed beside Shakespeare: his art is not art in the manner of Turgenev, Shakespeare or Maupassant, it is something new, and it creates deeper qualities of self-awareness and analysis"
The Nobel laureate in literature John Galsworthy, in a letter to the English translator of Russian literature Constance Garnett, who first introduced the English-speaking public to the texts of Tolstoy, Dostoevsky and Chekhov
Aristocracy · In the Press · Interviews · Monarchies
Head of the House of Habsburg calls Harry and Meghan's interview gossip in the Kronen Zeitung
The current head of the House of Habsburg, the grandson of Austria's last emperor, Charles I, 60-year-old Archduke Karl von Habsburg-Lothringen, has commented on the scandalous interview given by Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, speaking to Austria's largest newspaper, the Kronen Zeitung. He
Faith · Observations · Ethnography · Humour
Absolution prayer in the hands of the dead and a 17th-century foreigner's report on Saint Peter
That's just the sort of people we are. Saint Peter reads on a slip of paper that the departed is a Russian, and at once admits him to heaven. A modern priest reports that a note bearing the so-called prayer of absolution is placed in the hands