Books · Monarchies · Mores · Humour
Churchill's granddaughter ridicules the wretched library in the home of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle. Alexandra Churchill, a writer and historian, drew attention to the half-empty bookcases, filled with dummy books and odd volumes that are destined to die alone on those shelves. By the lady'
Cinema · Books · Observations · Mores
I am reading Werner Herzog's memoirs, "Every Man for Himself and God Against All", and have reached the chapter "Wives, Children". We are already close to the end of the book, after the chapters on his youth, childhood dreams, film shoots and how he
NB! · Archive · Moscow · Observations · Mores
Album of the Beauties of the Whole World from the editors of the newspaper Russkiy Listok, 1903. These are precisely the world's beauties as I had always pictured them
Archive · Mores · People · Humour
I order you to go to the cinema together with Comrades Molotov, Kaganovich, Zhdanov, Vasya and me. (Be sure to go to the cinema today). Below is Stalin's endorsement: "I obey with pleasure. I. Stalin"
Aristocracy · London · Mores · Society
Thomas Coutts, aged 80, head of Coutts Bank in the late eighteenth century, with his second wife, the 37-year-old actress Harriot Mellon. They married in 1815, and the old man lived for another 7 years. After his death, Lady Harriot married the future Duke of St Albans, who
Archive · Books · Mores · Education
Students are forbidden to marry for the whole time of their residence at the university: so runs paragraph 17 of the section "Rules for Students of the University During the Course of Study" in the "Rules for Students and Non-Matriculated Auditors… If one takes this fact
Archive · Observations · Mores · Society
Urban legends of 1917: the capital teems with street sellers of cigarettes, many of them sick soldiers, many contagious, often syphilitics, who might infect the cigarettes and sell them on. Greetings to poisoned needles, poisoned apples, infected envelopes, the spraying of viruses and dangerous perfumes. A hundred years have passed,
Archaeology · Mores · Rome
Roman pugilists fought absolutely naked, wearing only a kind of glove known as the caestus on their hands, studded with metal strips or balls, which often made the bouts end in death. Gladiators' gloves also had iron spikes. This part of the fighting culture came from Ancient Greece
NB! · Aristocracy · Architecture · Observations · Mores
NB! · Archive · Mores · Society · Saint Petersburg
NB! · Books · Mores · People
Aristocracy · Archive · Moscow · Mores
The economic crisis of late 1916 compelled many noble Muscovites to forsake their private transport for public, and to choose the tram, not yet so familiar, but far cheaper than a private motor car. Alexandre Benois noted in his diary with astonishment that he had once met, on a tram,