London · Monarchies · Heritage · Mores
The back of St Edward's Chair is covered in inscriptions. They are no part of its decoration: they are the marks of vandalism to which the chair was subjected over the centuries. For most of its 700-year history it stood in Westminster Abbey like an ordinary armchair,
NB! · Architecture · Heritage · Mores
Monarchies · Observations · Mores · Society · People
Offa (757-796), a Black King of Anglo-Saxon England? This time it is the dynasty of the first kings of the Angles that has been subjected to blackwashing. In particular, the most powerful ruler of Scandinavia and northern Germany, the son of Wermund and grandson of Wihtlæg, a descendant
NB! · Observations · Mores
Archive · Monarchies · Observations · Mores
A note from the eleven-year-old Princess Lilibet, the future Queen Elizabeth II, to her parents, George VI and Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, on the day of their coronation, 12 May 1937. The loss of simplicity, naivety and spontaneity is, after all, one of the most significant losses mankind suffered
NB! · Aristocracy · Architecture · London · Monarchies · Mores
Aristocracy · Books · Mores · Humour
Alexei Konstantinovich Tolstoy's wife was called Sofya Andreyevna Tolstaya, just like the wife of Leo Tolstoy. Alexei Konstantinovich and Leo Nikolayevich were second cousins to one another
Aristocracy · Books · Mores · Society
What Do the Nobility Think of Commoners Who Have Made Their Way in the World? "These plebeians, who somehow or other force their way up: in all the many I have met, I have found them a remarkably capable and clever lot… Seminarists, petty townsfolk, all this small fry:
Faith · Art · Mores · Rome
Attacks on Michelangelo's fresco "The Last Judgement" on the altar wall of the Sistine Chapel began while it was still being painted. The grievances were various: some disliked the treatment of the subject, others were displeased by the realistic manner of depiction. The masterpiece was called
Art · Mores · People · Rome
Orest Adamovich Kiprensky, already a very celebrated artist in Russia (1805: Large Gold Medal for the painting “Dmitry Donskoy on the Field of Kulikovo”; 1812: academician; his contemporaries called him the Russian Van Dyck), lived for long stretches in Rome, which he first reached in 1816, at the age of
Archive · Faith · Science · Mores · People
Mikhail Vasilyevich Lomonosov makes a most unexpected connection between the Easter festivities and a rise in mortality. In one of his letters to Ivan Ivanovich Shuvalov, written in 1761, speaking of Easter, Lomonosov describes the dangers to life and the multitude of deaths that overtake the Orthodox people every year.
Archive · Faith · Books · Mores · Ethnography
"The bright Resurrection of Christ draws near, the universal joy of Christendom. Then, though the Passion of the Lord is read almost without cease and many times repeated, our thoughts are already upon Holy Week: one pictures to himself pleasant and rich dishes; another wonders whether his clothes will