Archive · In the Press · London · Monarchies · Observations · Mores
The other day I wrote about the piece in Elle on Elizabeth's childhood. The articles by the royal family's former governess appeared in various publications in Europe and the United States and astonished the public. The Windsors were astonished too, having given no permission for the
Books · London · Monarchies · Mores · Nature · Ethnography
I wrote in my book about the tradition of telling the bees important family news and notifying them of deaths. The English have long shared their joys and sorrows with their bees, and at moments of family bereavement the hives, too, are dressed in mourning. If the little bee houses
Archive · London · Monarchies · Mores
The favourite amusement of Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret was mechanical horses. Not, of course, that the girls had not been riding since earliest childhood, and Elizabeth simply adored all horses, both her own and those passing by their house, and the Guards' chargers too. She even said that, were
In the Press · London · Monarchies · Mores
In 1950 the French weekly Elle ran a long feature on the childhood of Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret, signed with the name of their governess, Marion Crawford. Marion relates how she came to meet the Duke and Duchess of York, son and daughter-in-law of King George VI, quite
NB! · Archive · Monarchies · Mores · Paris · People
Princess Diana and Dodi Al-Fayed in the lift of the Paris Ritz on 30 August 1997, the last day before their deaths. The third person in the lens of the surveillance camera is Claude Roulet, assistant to the president of the Ritz hotel
Archive · The East · Geography · Mores
"The Portuguese of Hormuz eat in water, because the ground is very hot." An illustration from a sixteenth-century Portuguese codex. Quite so, and quite literally: that is exactly what they did. Fleeing the unbearable heat, the Portuguese who had settled in the Persian Gulf began to fill
NB! · Monarchies · Mores · Humour
NB! · Mores · Humour
Archive · Monarchies · Mores · People
Elena, Queen of Poland and daughter of the Russian Tsar Ivan III, wrote to her father in 1503 asking him to send her black sable pelts, and by all means with the fore and hind paws and claws attached. But by the custom of those years the hunters cut off
NB! · Archive · Mores · People
Books · Observations · Mores
Found a Russian poem from the early seventeenth century, that is, the end of the Time of Troubles, describing a sister's sinful love for her brother. What is more, the sister does not even fear public censure and is ready to seek her brother's love in
Art · Monarchies · Observations · Mores · Nature
This portrait of 1783 by the eighteenth-century Swedish painter Alexander Roslin is sometimes called a portrait of Marie Antoinette, more rarely of Madame de Lamballe; in catalogues the picture passes as a portrait of an unknown lady, which sounds closer to the truth. But what is interesting is not