NB! · Faith · Art · Books · Ethnography
Orobas, one of the spirits of King Solomon, appears when conjured in the form of a man with a horse's head and gives answers to questions about the past, present and future. Illustration from Collin de Plancy's "Dictionnaire Infernal"
Books
A burr clung to my hem. Is it To blame for this? No, the fault is mine: I walked Where the Villain's house stands. For the patches of mud on my shoes, Is the bog worth scolding? It is able to spew forth Only Filth, You wandered in
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Archive · Books · Monarchies · Moscow
The phrase “If they have no bread, let them eat cake!” was pinned on the unfortunate Marie Antoinette. The original goes back to a text by Rousseau. But the Russian Emperor Alexander I also found himself entangled in an unpleasant story, when he threw biscuits to the crowd, and people
Books · Observations
And why does everyone say: a military genius? Is he a genius, the man who manages to order the rusks to be brought up in good time, and to tell this one to go to the right and that one to the left? It is only because military men are
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Books · Observations · Society · Humour
The Commission on Laws has existed for a hundred and fifty years, cost millions and accomplished nothing. Do you remember when Prince Andrei did not wish to join the commission for the drafting of laws, pleading that it required a legal education, which he did not possess? And Speransky, who
NB! · Art · Books
Ascalaphus, Hades' gardener, is turned into an owl as punishment for revealing that Persephone had tasted the food of the dead, pomegranate seeds, and so cannot return to the world of the living. Ovid's Metamorphoses
NB! · Books · London · Monarchies · Society Pages
Camilla, Queen Consort of England, presented the 2022 Booker Prize to Shehan Karunatilaka, a 47-year-old Sri Lankan writer living in Singapore, for his book The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida. This is the seventh time Camilla has presented the award.
Books · Monarchies · Mores · People
The legendary series of photographs in which the Queen Mother sips a beer became the source of the cover image for a new biography by the Northern Irish writer Gareth Russell, Do Let’s Have Another Drink: The Singular Wit and Double Measures of Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother. The
Aristocracy · Cinema · Books · Observations · Pop Culture
Remember Rupert, Stewie Griffin's beloved teddy bear from the brilliant show Family Guy? In fact, the name Rupert was not chosen at random: the detail is meant to underline Stewie's aristocratic bearing and his special position within a plain American family. Rupert Bear is a famous
Books · Saint Petersburg
The first paragraph of Part One of Volume One of "War and Peace".