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Elizabeth Taylor's 1976 trip to Iran with photographer Firouz Zahedi

In 1976 Elizabeth Taylor visited Tehran in the company of her friend, the celebrated Hollywood photographer and cousin of the Iranian ambassador to the United States, Firooz Zahedi. The series of photographs Zahedi took on that trip was shown in Los Angeles in 2011. According to Firooz Zahedi's

NB! · Faith · Monarchies · Heritage · People

Eleanor of Aquitaine, mother of Richard the Lionheart, lies beside her second husband, Henry II, in the French Abbey of Fontevraud

Observations · Mores · People · Humour

Ralph Lincoln and his kinship with Abraham Lincoln through Mordecai Lincoln

Ralph Lincoln likes to stress his resemblance to Abraham Lincoln and even wears an old-fashioned suit and a top hat in the manner of the famous Lincolnian image. A public figure and speaker on American history, above all on the biography of the 16th President of the United States,

Cinema · Monarchies · Observations · People

Queen Victoria's sense of humour and sharp mind, and Nina Usatova as a possible Victoria

Queen Victoria is usually presented as a squeamish prude and a lady of sorrow, but she had a wonderful sense of humour and a very sharp mind, and a smile, glimpsed in a few rare photographs, that could lift the spirits. I should like to see Nina Usatova, for example,

NB! · Archive · People

Vsevolod Meyerhold's Birth Name Was Karl Kasimir Theodor

Cinema · Moscow · Education · People

Meyerhold's complimentary pass led GUM clerk Nemolyaev to the theatre and VGIK

How chance intervened in the life of Volodya Nemolyayev, a humble clerk and graduate of the Lomonosov Technical School (formerly the Imperial Komissarov School). Meyerhold presented the nimble GUM employee with a complimentary pass to any ten performances, and the young man fell wholeheartedly in love with the theatre and

NB! · London · Monarchies · People

Today marks the 69th anniversary of Elizabeth II's accession to the throne

NB! · Observations · Society · People

A reminder: by the racial reckoning of the nineteenth century, Pushkin counts as an octoroon, that is, the possessor of one-eighth African blood

Society · People

Andrey Sakharov on democracy and why those who have never seen it do not ask for it

Democracy is like an orange. A man who has never seen an orange will not ask for one. Andrei Sakharov

NB! · Cinema · Moscow · People · Pop Culture

Vasily Lanovoy in June 2018

Vasily Lanovoy in June 2018. He was speaking about the destruction of the Vakhtangov Theatre during the bombing in the summer of 1941. Lanovoy turned 87 this year. Today Irina Kupchenko announced the death of her husband: Vasily Semyonovich has passed away

Oil painting of a man in a uniform lying in a red coffin among flowers and palm leaves.

NB! · Art · Moscow · People

Alexander Gerasimov and other artists painted Stalin in his coffin in the Hall of Columns

As for painters and leaders: when Stalin lay in state in the Hall of Columns, Alexander Gerasimov (1881-1963) sat beside the coffin with his sketch box, drawing a portrait of the Generalissimo. Other artists stood nearby with their easels, and all of them painted the immortal Stalin in his

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Wikipedia quotes a very vivid recollection of the People's Artist Isaak Brodsky by Korney Chukovsky, who met him in 1926 to talk about his teacher Ilya Repin: “…Ah, how sumptuously he lives — and how tediously! Already in the hall hang portraits and littl

Wikipedia quotes a very vivid recollection of the People's Artist Isaak Brodsky by Korney Chukovsky, who met him in 1926 to talk about his teacher Ilya Repin: “…Ah, how sumptuously he lives — and how tediously! Already in the hall hang portraits and little portraits of Lenin, fabricated by