Aristocracy · Monarchies · Mores · People

Napoleon's mother explained her thriftiness by the prospect of having to support kings

Napoleon's mother once flatly refused to live at the Trianon; court life held no interest for her, and she kept fairly much to herself, even declining to attend her son's coronation. Of all her many original traits of character, what most bewildered the courtiers was the

Aristocracy · Monarchies · Mores · Saint Petersburg

"It is remarkable that in a country where white lead and rouge were in universal use among ladies, where a woman will not approach a window to beg alms without rouge, where in the very language the word red is an expression of outstanding beauty and where

Mademoiselle Vorontsova, known in marriage as Princess Ekaterina Romanovna Dashkova, was the closest friend of Catherine the Great, director of the Saint Petersburg Academy of Sciences and one of the best-educated women of her time. Among the unofficial recollections of Dashkova there is an episode about her marriage that

NB! · Archive · Mores · People · Pop Culture

John Lennon on the knee of his Aunt Mimi Smith, who became his guardian after his parents' divorce and raised him as her own son

NB! · Aristocracy · Archive · Monarchies · Mores

When the ladies of the court, wearied by the unending ball that was the brief reign of Peter III, complained to him that in the tobacco haze of the boisterous public festivities they were obliged to rub shoulders with comic actresses and dancers, the Empe

NB! · Mores · People · Humour

Igor Stravinsky: "I so enjoy drinking Scotch that sometimes I think my name is Igor Strava-whisky"

Architecture · Mores · Paris

History of the Moulin de la Galette in Montmartre, from Mill to Dance Hall

The celebrated Montmartre windmill Moulin de la Galette, built in 1622 and immortalised in paintings by Van Gogh, Toulouse-Lautrec and Renoir, stands to this day. Moulin is French for "mill". To be sure, if the nineteenth-century owners of the milling complex are to be believed, a

Archive · London · Observations · Mores

Pre-Christmas shopping at Woolworths in London in 1955 and life before online shopping

Christmas Eve at Woolworths in London, 1955. Do you remember the time when shops were crowded and noisy, and when going shopping was a serious undertaking in its own right? No snowdrift could daunt you when you knew that any minute now you and Mum would queue at the department

Art · Mores · Humour

It's a little chilly, so I've put another dog on your bed

George Sprod, 1956

NB! · Archive · London · Mores

A drunkard leaning on a lamp post at night in London, 1934

Mores · People · Humour

Jaguar and tiger skin trousers of Texans Samuel Richardson and John King Fisher

Former Governor of Texas Sam Houston, who gave his name to the city of Houston, in a jaguar-skin waistcoat. Captain Samuel Richardson of the 2nd Texas Cavalry Regiment, Confederate Army, in trousers of jaguar skin. But these are mild fashions compared with the habits of the Texas gunman John

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! · Architecture · Moscow · Mores