NB! · Books · Observations · Humour
Incidentally, if you fancy it, you can telephone Proust
Incidentally, if you fancy it, you can telephone Proust. Though he is almost never at home
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NB! · Books · Museums · Paris · People
Marcel Proust's coat shown at the Carnavalet Museum in Paris for the writer's 150th anniversary
Marcel Proust's fur-collared overcoat. It can be seen at the exhibition marking the writer's 150th anniversary at the Musée Carnavalet in Paris
Books · People · Humour
The Thoughts of Young Gustave Flaubert on Human Suffering and World History
VII I expect every possible evil from men. VIII I believe that mankind pursues only one aim: to suffer. IX World history is a farce Thoughts of the young Gustave Flaubert
NB! · Archive · Books · People
"I feel more attached to my dog than to any human being", from the notes of the twenty-year-old Gustave Flaubert, who turns two hundred today
NB! · Archive · Art · Books · People
The Finnish writer, artist and creator of the Moomin universe Tove Jansson (1914–2001) in the studio at her home, 1956
NB! · Art · Books · Mores · Humour
Artist-Writers and Young Ladies: Take Note
Coming Up · Art · Books · Observations
Bonhams shows porcelain flowers from Vincennes and Sèvres linked to Madame de Pompadour
The auction house Bonhams wins back my favour with an exhibition of flowers. These, however, are no ordinary flowers. In the first place, they are made of porcelain: just look at the exquisite delicacy of the work! In the second, they are products of the Vincennes and Sèvres porcelain manufactories.
Art · Cinema · Books · London · Monarchies
Edward V and brother Richard, who vanished in the Tower, in Shakespeare and art
John Everett Millais, The Princes in the Tower, 1878. The two princes who vanished without trace from their confinement in the Tower made an impression even on Shakespeare. He told the story of Edward V and his younger brother Richard in the history play "Richard III". Edward V
Art · Books · Museums · Science
Vermeer painted The Astronomer and The Geographer in 1668-1669 in the same interior
While you were making a discovery, Vermeer managed to paint two pictures. The pictures are called The Astronomer and The Geographer; they were painted in 1668-1669, and they show one and the same man in one and the same interior, but with different attributes. The Astronomer is in the
Books · Mores · People
Intelligence equals moral health, and health is needed to live long, not only physically but mentally
The fundamental principle of the intelligentsia's ethos is intellectual freedom, freedom as a moral category. The only things from which a cultured person is not free are his own conscience and his own thought. Dmitry Sergeyevich Likhachev, “Letters on the Good and the Beautiful”.
Aristocracy · Art · Books · Museums · People
Two Vigée Le Brun portraits from the Yusupov collection shown at an exhibition in New Jerusalem
In the late 1790s the celebrated Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun worked in Russia, painting august portraits and persons of the very highest rank, such as the last King of Poland; she devoted a separate part of her memoirs to the Russian period, and it has been published in Russian. The
Cinema · Books · Science · Palaeontology · Nature · Humour
Dale Guthrie cooked a stew from the mummified bison Blue Babe in 1984
There have been other occasions when modern people ate frozen representatives of the Pleistocene megafauna found in icy landscapes. And I am not speaking of Andrew Bergman's crime comedy "The Freshman", in which, for a million dollars, Hawaiian tiger fish mixed with smoked turkey was served