Archive · Architecture · Monarchies · Observations · Society · Saint Petersburg

Alexander III ten years behind a grille in Ivan Fomin's design, then in the Russian Museum basement

It turns out that for the tenth anniversary of the October Revolution, in 1927, the monument to Alexander III on Uprising Square was put in a cage. The project was devised by the architect Ivan Fomin, author of the concept of proletarian classicism, known for the NKVD building on Lubyanka

NB! · Books · Observations · Pop Culture · Humour

Found an Alla Pugacheva Easter egg in a 1990s edition of "Crocodile Gena and His Friends"

Art · Books · Observations

Marcus Aurelius in his “Meditations” on retreating into one's own soul

They seek retreats for themselves in the wilderness, by the seashore, in the mountains. You too pine for this. But how very commonplace it all is, when at any hour you please you may withdraw into yourself. For nowhere does a man retire more quietly and peacefully than into his

Art · Observations · Science · Society

An article in the journal of the American Psychological Association examines how accusing an artist of a crime changes the public's attitude to his works

Participants in the experiment were asked to assess a work of art, then told that its author stood accused of one crime or another, and asked to assess the work afresh, being asked along the way whether the display of this work ought to be restricted. The upshot was that

The East · Geography · Observations · Society

The author on the risk of Spain losing control over the Strait of Gibraltar

One must understand that the feral hordes now storming Spain are making their way not to the mainland part of the kingdom, but to Spain's African possessions. And this is not about the arrival of yet more multitudes of thousands in Europe, since they are arriving there quite

NB! · Observations · Society · Paris

I wonder whether, forty years from now, people will post photographs of Macron in the same spirit in which we post snapshots of Chirac?

Art · Museums · Observations · Heritage · Society

The vandals who tried to attach a propaganda photograph to Picasso's 1901 "Motherhood" and poured paint on the floor of the National Gallery have been found guilty of criminal damage

The vandals who tried to attach a propaganda photograph to Picasso's 1901 "Motherhood" and poured paint on the floor of the National Gallery have been found guilty of criminal damage. Sentence will be passed in the autumn. It is all, of course, very stupid and dreadful,

Observations · Mores · Society

Origin of the word client, from a Roman patron's protection to paid services

I do not usually comment on shameful stories like the one that took place in a Georgian hotel. But for the completeness of this disgraceful drama it must be observed that the word “client” originally denoted a person under protection. The Latin cliens goes back to the verb cluere, “to

Aristocracy · Observations · Education · Pop Culture

West Heath Girls School and the Scottish Ancestry of Tilda Swinton

Just learned that Tilda Swinton and Diana Spencer were in the same class at West Heath Girls School, a boarding school near Sevenoaks in Kent. Tilda Swinton remembered boarding school as a very lonely place. West Heath Girls School was a prestigious, though not first-rank, private school for girls.

Faith · Observations · Society

A call to young people to become missionaries and rebel against inertia and apathy

Leo XIV has recorded a video message to the young Catholics of a small Andean community in Peru, telling them: "The Church needs your holy rebellion" But not a rebellion against what you may have thought. Rather, against the "sofa youth", benumbed and comfortably settled in

Art · Observations · New York · Humour

Mosaic of typical characters at Prince station on the New York subway

Saw a great big station, Stretched and said: "What station is this? Dibuny or Yamskaya?" And from the platform they said: "This is the city of New York. This is the city of New York, they say." Literal translation And, accordingly, a mosaic in the New

Art · Observations

Uninhabited geometric landscapes by Krüger, a painter of the New Leipzig School

It seems I have a new favourite contemporary artist: Markus Matthias Krüger, the German reformer of academic landscape painting, born in 1981 in Gardelegen. Krüger received his professional training at the Academy of Visual Arts in Leipzig (the Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst), under Professors Annette Schröder and Ulrich Hachulla.