Archive · The East · Books · Observations · People
The book about the intelligence officer Ruth Werner contains an episode on the exposure of Comintern agents in China. In 1931 the exposures of the Far Eastern Bureau of the Comintern began. Arrested were the "director of internal communications" of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of
The East · Books · Nature · Humour
Strafokamil: strafo (bird) + kamil (camel) = strangely enough, an ostrich. The word was introduced by the hierodeacon Iona, who travelled through Egypt in the seventeenth century: "The bird is like a camel and very large, its hoof has two toes."
Almaty · Books · Society · People · Saint Petersburg
Jambyl Jabayev Leningraders, my children! Leningraders, my pride! In the current of the steppe stream I see a glint of the Neva's current. If along the snowy ridges I glide my aged gaze, I see the arches of your bridges, The blueness of the Baltic dawns, The swarms
Almaty · Books · Moscow · Observations · Society · People
The Kazakh poet Dzhambul won fame very late: he became known only in 1936, when he was already very old. It cannot be said that nothing had been heard of him before. Dzhambul Dzhabayev was surrounded by a large family and was, by all accounts, a distinguished akyn, the victor
NB! · The East · Books · Humour
Archive · Art · Books · Heritage
A Collection of Goya Etchings Found by Chance in a French Château. Published in 1816, the Tauromaquia was no commercial success, but the etchings that have now turned up are going under the hammer at Sotheby's with a starting price of $820,000 The rare prints were discovered
NB! · Archive · Art · Books
NB! · Geography · Art · Books · Nature
Books · Observations · People
What, in fact, were these two stories told for. There was once a captain who made three voyages round the world, the author of several books, a pirate and simply an entertaining scoundrel, William Dampier. King William III received him into the academy, and then Dampier was tried for cruelty
Interviews · Books · People
It is said that Defoe did not find a publisher for his sea novel at once. By the time he came to write "Robinson...", the sixty-year-old De Foe, as he styled himself, was already a well-known journalist and writer in England. And, as John Winterich
Books · London · Mores
William Taylor Was the Owner of a Shop in Paternoster Row with the Promising Name "The Ship" By the end of his life the successful businessman had managed to put by between 40 and 50 thousand pounds. By the standards of the eighteenth century that is an enormous
NB! · Archive · Books · Humour