Books · People · Humour
"I'm not lazy. I'm just very gifted, but instead of being good at music or mathematics, I am skilled at sleeping late" Elizabeth Jane Howard, writer, actress and model
Archive · Books · Mores · People
"My father was senselessly, grievously miserly; he hid even my childish money, given to me for the holidays. However often I begged him to buy me some ribbon, a trifle, he never once gave way. Later, when the revolution came, they confiscated this money-box along with everything else.
Monarchies · Mores · People
The Prussian King Frederick William I recruited the tallest men to be found into his regiment, known as His Majesty's Regiment. The minimum height of the soldiers in this regiment was 1 metre 88 centimetres, which is why the formation became known as the Potsdam Giants. One of
Almaty · Art · Moscow · Museums · Observations · Heritage · People
Today Itkind's sculptures are displayed in many museums around the world and held in private collections, while a considerable part of the master's legacy is in Kazakhstan, where the most productive decades of his life were spent. Unfortunately, for a time some of the wooden sculptures
Almaty · Archive · Art · Society · People
I have been fortunate to hear about Itkind from people who were his friends, who knew him and his family, and who could shed light on the misconceptions largely introduced into circulation by a popular sketch by the journalist Eduard Topol, who met Itkind. The brief biography of the truly
Almaty · Art · People
The Jew who died twice. The rabbi who became an artist. The eccentric old man, a half-wild sorcerer-elder who lived on roots and gathered old tree stumps, dwelling in a dugout on the outskirts of Alma-Ata. The best-known Soviet sculptor of the 1930s, who vanished into
Archive · Books · Museums · Society · People
In late 1933 Vladimir Bonch-Bruevich, director of the State Literary Museum, acquired the archive of the poet Mikhail Kuzmin. The papers included the celebrated diary of the Leningrad poet. For the diary entries covering August 1905 to December 1931, Kuzmin received an enormous sum: 25 thousand roubles. Needless to
Art · Museums · Observations · People
Remembering Goethe today, 188 years since his death. I do like the way that, in the portrait by his friend Johann Tischbein, who won his fame precisely through his portraits of Goethe, he has settled himself in the pose of an ancient Roman upon a ruined Egyptian obelisk, beneath an
NB! · Art · People
NB! · Art · People
Natalia Goncharova. “Design for a Woman’s Dress with a Boa”. Second half of the 1920s.
Cinema · People · Nature
The dog Togo and his master Seppala, heroes of the Great Race of Mercy of 1925. In the coldest winter Alaska had known in twenty years, an epidemic of diphtheria broke out in the remote town of Nome, and the meagre stocks of serum there had passed their expiry date.
Archive · Art · People
In all, up to 16 thousand men from Württemberg took part in the Russian campaign; only a few hundred of them returned from Russia.