In the Press · Cinema · London · Society · People · Pop Culture
Today the Italian press is chewing over Rowan Atkinson's remark that he is "tired of political correctness, it is like living in the Middle Ages". The Italians are quoting an interview given in honour of the actor's 66th birthday, in which he spoke, among
London · Monarchies · Humour
The English royal family has reunited at Windsor Castle. In the photograph: the Queen's youngest son and his wife, the Earl and Countess of Wessex, William and Kate, the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, Elizabeth, Prince Charles and Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, and Princess Anne
London · Monarchies · Observations · Humour
Yesterday, at an interior-design lecture, a respected lady informed us with a perfectly straight face that Queen Victoria, being an ethnic German, invented the Biedermeier style upon arriving in England. Decorators and architects are of course under no obligation to be historians and to know such things, so I
London · Observations · Society · People · Humour
I know that many are still mourning the untimely death of the American judge Ruth Bader Ginsburg, but let us not pass by the darlings still among us, such as Baroness Floella Benjamin, who celebrated her 71st birthday in such a dazzling look that, as Andrey Malakhov would say, "
London · People · Humour
A true story that befell Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery, hero of the Second World War, in London, when he climbed into a taxi and said to the driver:. - Waterloo, please. - The railway station? - Of course. For the battle, it is a little late now.
London · Mores · Humour
eBay delights us with an authentic eighteenth-century sedan chair for £9,500. It is perhaps the closest historical analogue to Uber Black. In England such conveyances became popular from the 1630s and were called sedans, after the French town of Sedan, which specialised in the manufacture of covered litters.
London · Monarchies · Observations · Mores · Humour
On the well-worn anecdote about how at Queen Elizabeth II's reception in 1961 Yury Gagarin, having drunk a cup of tea with lemon, fished out the slice of lemon and ate it, there is one clarification. Such an incident did indeed occur, but the man in question
NB! · London · Society · Pop Culture · Humour
NB! · Art · London · Observations · Mores · Humour
The picture is, of course, about fashionable parasols in London in the 1790s, but the hats here are no less remarkable. I should like to self-isolate beneath an exceedingly wide-brimmed hat in the style of a galero
Archaeology · London · Monarchies · Heritage
In this vault rest the remains of Queen Jane Seymour, King Henry VIII, King Charles I and an infant of Queen Anne. A little crowded for a single burial. The tomb beneath St George's Chapel at Windsor Castle was discovered by chance, during excavations for a secret underground
Archive · Books · London · Mores · People
In May 1824 one of the greatest crimes in the history of English literature was committed in London. Barely a month after Byron's death, his memoirs were destroyed. And this was done in the presence of the poet's close friends and his executor. Memoirs are usually
Architecture · London · Observations
The celebrated "flat house" in South Kensington, built in the late nineteenth century by William Douglas on a tiny wedge-shaped scrap of land, is in fact triangular in plan, with its narrowest part just 180 cm wide and its broadest 10 metres. Originally the house contained seven