NB! · Archive · Observations · Society

The Russian text of the ratified convention on the cession of Alaska is contained in volume 42 of the Complete Collection of the Laws of the Russian Empire

The Russian text of the ratified convention on the cession of Alaska is contained in volume 42 of the Complete Collection of the Laws of the Russian Empire. This document says nothing about 99 years of lease

Page with the Russian preamble of the treaty, bearing the full title of Emperor Alexander II in a gold ornamental frame with coats of arms and a double-headed eagle.

NB! · Archive · Observations · Society

Preamble of the Treaty on the Cession of Alaska to the United States and the Languages of Its Text

The preamble to the Treaty on the Cession of Alaska to the United States of North America. The treaty itself, rather oddly, is drawn up in English and French; in Russian there is only the page preceding the text of the treaty and the page following it

NB! · Books · Observations · Humour

When you decide to look at your own bibliography after a two-week holiday

NB! · Observations

Will You Be Renewing?

NB! · Art · Observations · Humour

Who Would Have Thought Rubens Would Suit Johnson So Well

NB! · Observations · Humour

Pig Latin, you say?

Cinema · Monarchies · Observations · Mores

Anyone who dreams of a prince should watch the 1969 film "Anne of the Thousand Days", which won the Oscar for Best Costume Design

Anyone who dreams of a prince should watch the 1969 film "Anne of the Thousand Days", which won the Oscar for Best Costume Design. True, the picture contains a number of dubious historical allusions, such as the presence of Mary Tudor at her mother's deathbed, which

NB! · Observations · Humour

Thank you, but I seem to have gone off the prawn ceviche

Architecture · Cinema · London · Observations · Heritage

London restores the 1929-31 control room of Battersea Power Station, which once supplied Buckingham Palace and Parliament

London has restored the control room of Battersea Power Station (1929-31), which once kept the lights on at Buckingham Palace and Parliament. The power station has been out of operation since 1981, and since then its premises have been partly mothballed and guarded as a piece of England'

Aristocracy · Madrid · Monarchies · Observations · Saint Petersburg · Humour

I do not know whether the video has reached the internet yet, in which, yesterday, at the newly opened Juan Cantina Española in Petersburg, having read the Spanish Vanity Fair and eaten my fill of fried artichokes, I shouted that within two hundred metres

I do not know whether the video has reached the internet yet, in which, yesterday, at the newly opened Juan Cantina Española in Petersburg, having read the Spanish Vanity Fair and eaten my fill of fried artichokes, I shouted that within two hundred metres there was no more beautiful woman

Art · Moscow · Museums · Observations

Paintings by Matisse and Pavel Kuznetsov from the Morozov collection at the Pushkin Museum

Standing between Henri Matisse's "Moroccan Triptych" and Pavel Kuznetsov's "Mirage in the Steppe". Thanks are due to the curators of the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, and of course to the great Russian patrons, the Morozovs, for placing on a single

NB! · Art · Moscow · Museums · Observations