Faith · Moscow · Observations · Mores · Society

Happy Palm Sunday!

I have a question, addressed perhaps not even to the rectors of Moscow's churches so much as to observant citizens at large. What, exactly, is so difficult about bringing in pussy willow for parishioners and setting up stalls with it on the grounds near the church? Candles are

London · Monarchies · Observations · Mores · Humour

Viktor Konetsky's story of Gagarin, a lemon and Elizabeth II is most likely a myth

A Footnote on the Popular Anecdote of Yury Gagarin, the Queen and the Slice of Lemon. It probably could indeed have happened, but the man drinking tea was not Gagarin at all. It was Captain-Lieutenant Vetoshkin, who fished out a piece of lemon with his fingers and ate the

NB! · London · Monarchies · Observations · Mores · People

How Twenty Years Have Slipped By Since the Wedding of Charles and Camilla

Art · Mores · Paris · Humour

The Rue du Cherche-Midi in Paris, its name origins and César Baldaccini's centaur

There is a curious street in Paris called Rue du Cherche-Midi, "Seek Noon Street". One version holds that the name comes from an ancient bas-relief of an astronomer taking measurements with a sundial. Another ties the enigmatic, even comical name to the forests that once covered

NB! · Mores · Society

Will I Really Be Refused the Vote?

Aristocracy · Archive · Moscow · Mores

Moscow Balls in the Winter of 1814 and 1815 in a Letter by Sofya Volkova

The Moscow winter Seasons of 1814-15 were brighter and richer than the pre-war Seasons of 1810-11. This is understandable: people were exhausted by the hardships of war, by ruin, by universal gloom and endless mourning, and when the time came, they returned to life with new and

NB! · Art · Mores

An Everyday Sight of the Eighteenth Century: A Shoe Seller with Her Samples

Newspaper illustration “What’s Wrong Here?” showing legs in cuffed trousers, checked socks and polished black shoes.

NB! · Archive · In the Press · Mores · New York · Humour

New York Daily News in 1931 on why a gentleman should not wear conspicuous socks

The New York Daily News observes that gentlemen do not wear conspicuous socks. 1931

Aristocracy · Archive · Moscow · Mores

A Moscow grandee, poet and celebrated writer, Yury Alexandrovich Neledinsky-Meletsky, found a touching and ingenious way of calming the anxieties of his ailing wife over the fate of their only son Sergei, who served in the years of the Patriotic War…

Yekaterina Khovanskaya, like many mothers, suffered greatly when no word came from her son, especially during the chief and bloodiest battles, which only aggravated her already very frail condition. The son was a notorious carouser and simply forgot to write home, so his papa devised a stratagem: he asked him,

Archive · Art · Books · Mores

Illustrations of craftsmen from a fifteenth-century manuscript commissioned by the Mendel family of Nuremberg, founders of an almshouse for elderly masters

Illustrations of craftsmen from a fifteenth-century manuscript commissioned by the Mendel family of Nuremberg, founders of an almshouse for elderly masters. Later, other families who owned workshops also commissioned similar registers of their craftsmen. The mail-maker bends wire, while a finished shirt of mail hangs limp on the

Aristocracy · Archive · Faith · Moscow · Mores

The Military Governor of Moscow, Yury Vladimirovich Dolgorukov, Was a Great Friend of the Eminent Grandee Stepan Stepanovich Apraksin, Formerly Military Governor of Smolensk and Known Above All for His Lavish Receptions at His House on…

According to the account of Elizaveta Petrovna Yankova, Apraksin and Dolgorukov had a rather peculiar agreement: whichever of them died first was to give a sign to the other, who remained among the living, and to appear to him three times before his death, to announce that the hour had

Observations · Mores · People · Humour

Betty Ford, wife of the 38th President of the United States, Gerald Ford, dances on a table in the White House in 1977

I meant to be indignant and to write that it is unthinkable for a figure of such rank to dance on tables, but then I recalled the photograph of Galina Brezhneva dancing on a table, not in the White House, admittedly, but in her own flat, at a private gathering