Archive · Observations · Humour
Look what they've done to the poor fellow! 1897: the very latest invention, combining physical exercise with the morning toilette. Rather poor apparatus you have in your gymnasium, sir.
Archive · Art · People
Jemelia Pugatschew in prison. The German caption reads: A rebel in Russia under the assumed name of Tsar Peter III in the Orenburg Governorate. A very rare engraving by Hiller, c. 1780, with a portrait of Yemelyan Pugachev
Archive · Books · Mores · People · Humour
Knight of the Rueful Countenance, Dostoevsky, dear little puffball, on the nose of literature you glow like a fresh new pimple. Among Nekrasov's verses there is one entitled "Belinsky's Epistle to Dostoevsky", written in January 1846. It is sometimes described as "collective"
NB! · Archive · The East
Archive · Monarchies · Observations · People
Catherine II compares herself with her innocently slain husband Peter III, as if to show that her happiness is built on the qualities of her character and her conduct. As, indeed, was the misfortune of Peter, the simpleton she deposed and whom her lover killed. Presumptuous of her, of course.
NB! · Archive · Architecture · Rome
Archive · Art · Moscow · Museums · Observations
For the first time in its entire history, the Garage Museum will acquire a collection of its own and a permanent display; more precisely, the collection will be shown as open storage in the museum's main building, the Four Seasons pavilion. The first works acquired by the museum
Archive · Books · London
I know a bank where the wild thyme blows, Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows, Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine, With sweet musk-roses and with eglantine: There sleeps Titania sometime of the night, Lull'd in these flowers with dances and delight; And there the snake
Archive · London · People
One of Winston Churchill's last public appearances was at the open window of his own home on his ninetieth birthday. That was the gift he chose to make to the public: a lion, by then gravely unwell and enfeebled, showing himself one last time. Barely a couple of
NB! · Archive · Architecture · Mores
Plan of an eighteenth-century bathroom. An interesting solution with side portals through which one may enter and leave
Aristocracy · Archive · London · Monarchies
The Dowager Queen Alexandra and her sister, the Russian Empress Maria Feodorovna, also a dowager, on their way to the coronation of George V, 22 June 1911. The daughters of King Christian IX of Denmark, the eldest, Alexandra of Denmark, and the middle one, Maria Feodorovna, were born three years
NB! · Archive · Observations · Rome