Coming Up · Books · Observations · Humour

Who Else Suffers From the Same Ruinous Addiction, Comrades?

Who else suffers from the same ruinous addiction, comrades? Shall we all run, in a body, to a specialist? From the programme of the twenty-fifth Non/fiction International Intellectual Literature Fair for 30 November. Leaving aside the wording of the theme, one must admit that all the participants in

Aristocracy · Archive · Observations · Mores · People · Humour

Stephen Tennant in Cecil Beaton's photographs, an aesthete famed for his appearance

In Cecil Beaton's photographs: Stephen Tennant, perhaps one of the most elegant people of the twentieth century, or at the very least one of the best-known aesthetes of the last one. Yet he became famous not for his lineage (though he came from the privileged class), nor

NB! · Observations · Science · Humour

Is it just me, or is the typeface in the logo of the Russian Academy of Sciences rather odd?

NB! · Observations · Humour

When you are sitting in a meeting that could have been an email

Art · Monarchies · Observations · Humour

Portrait of Charles IV of Spain from behind, painted from memory by Jean Bozil in 1820

A portrait of King Charles IV of Spain from behind, painted by the court miniaturist Jean Bozil in 1820, twelve years after his abdication, from memory. Apparently all that he could recall. Charles IV is that very King of Spain in whose stead the country came to be set to

NB! · Art · Pop Culture · Humour

Artist Elena Sheidlina Reimagines Horace Slughorn's Attempt to Hide from the Death Eaters

The artist Elena Sheidlina has reimagined Horace Slughorn's attempt to hide from the Death Eaters. On this occasion, no dragon's blood was needed to discover the hiding place.

NB! · Books · Education · Humour

“It seems to me as if I had not eaten for three days”, “when I do not have supper, I cannot sleep” and other important phrases for not dying of hunger, in French, shed light on the origins of the education of Ippolit Matveyevich Vorobyaninov, known as Kis

Page 317 of an old book with a question and answer on why stout people are less healthy than thin ones.

Books · Science · Humour

An old Russian book explains why stout people are less healthy than thin ones

Why are stout people not so healthy as lean ones? Because in a stout body the pores (passages) are all stopped up by the coldness of the phlegmatic spirits, and the excess of fatty humours, unable to escape from the body through the pores, is forced to return back into

Art · London · Observations · Society · Humour

Britain Impoverished by the Liberals Begs on the Thames Embankment with Her Battered Lion, the Palace of Westminster in Ruins Behind Her

Colour lithograph by Tom Merry, 1891. On the whole, 130 years on, the subject is topical once more. Only now the old lady Britannia must also sit there with a black eye, courtesy of her cultural enrichers.

NB! · The East · Cinema · Monarchies · Humour

Although it is a fallacy, Ridley Scott decided to use the myth of Napoleon firing cannon at the Sphinx in order to show more concisely in the film that Egypt had been taken

Art · Observations · Nature · Humour

Osborne’s painting “Cupboard Love” and the English idiom for self-interested love

Cupboard Love, Walter Osborne, 1886. In English the painting is called Cupboard Love, an idiom denoting self-interested affection. That is to say, the object of love is regarded as a source of benefits, namely as a cupboard stocked with tasty things. According to Osborne's conception, such is

Interviews · Cinema · Observations · Humour

Ridley Scott answers historians' criticism of his Napoleon film on French radio

Ridley Scott answers critics of his "Napoleon" who accuse him of falsifying history. I listened to Ridley Scott's interview on French radio, and when the talk turned to the barrage of criticism from historians who had abused his new film, the director said, curtly: "How