The East · Cinema · People
The Palme d'Or at Cannes goes to "It Was Just an Accident" by the Iranian director Jafar Panahi
The jury of the main competition this year was chaired by the French actress Juliette Binoche.
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London · Monarchies · Mores · People · Humour
Prince Philip's aunt and Empress Alexandra Feodorovna's niece, Queen Louise of Sweden (1889-1965), née Battenberg, often visited London, and once a bus very nearly ran her down
Prince Philip's aunt and Empress Alexandra Feodorovna's niece, Queen Louise of Sweden (1889-1965), née Battenberg, often visited London, and once a bus very nearly ran her down. After this unpleasantness, Queen Louise, when walking the streets of London, always carried with her a small card
Art · Books · People
In 1887 Repin painted two portraits of Tolstoy and “The Ploughman” at Yasnaya Polyana
The Ploughman. Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy at the Plough Ilya Repin, 1887. In the course of a week at Yasnaya Polyana in August 1887, Repin painted two large portraits of Tolstoy, made a great many drawings and produced a small picture, "The Ploughman". Repin watched Lev Tolstoy devote entire
Archive · The East · Geography · Books · Science · People · Ethnography
The 1914 Pamir expedition of Gauthiot and Zarubin and Paléologue's memoir of the scholar
In the memoirs of Maurice Georges Paléologue, French Ambassador to Russia, there is a curious recollection of meeting the well-known linguist Robert Edmund Gauthiot, who explored the Russian territories of the Pamirs together with the young Russian schola. The story runs as follows. In 1914 Zarubin, as a linguist
Art · Moscow · People · Society Pages
Boris Kocheishvili exhibition with a visit to his studio in Chisty Lane
Today the Andrei Cheglakov Foundation on Prechistenka opens a solo exhibition by Boris Kocheishvili, “Cloud, Lake, Tower”, marking the artist's 85th birthday. Boris Kocheishvili is one of the most important artists of the 1970s generation, a nonconformist and a solitary figure who shuns artistic expediency in his work.
Faith · Observations · People
Such Strange Goings-On
Cardinal Ratzinger, the future Pope Benedict XVI, asked John Paul II to let him retire no fewer than three times: in 1992, after suffering a stroke; in 1994, having gone partly blind; and in 1997, on reaching the age of 70. Each time the pontiff refused and asked him not
Books · Moscow · Paris · People
Yury Grigorovich, choreographer and one of the greatest figures of Soviet ballet, has died
Yury Grigorovich, choreographer and one of the greatest figures of Soviet ballet, has died. He missed his hundredth birthday by little more than a year. Chief choreographer of the Bolshoi Theatre from 1964 to 1995, Grigorovich was the creator of productions and editions of the classical ballets that formed the
Books · Mores · People
Intelligence Is Moral Health, and Health Is Needed to Live Long, Not Only in Body but in Mind
The fundamental principle of the intelligentsia's ethos is intellectual freedom, freedom as a moral category. The cultivated person is unfree only in respect of his own conscience and his own thought. Dmitry Sergeyevich Likhachev, “Letters on the Good and the Beautiful”.
NB! · Faith · People
Pope Benedict XV declared Joan of Arc a saint in 1920
Joan of Arc was canonised little more than a hundred years ago. On this day in 1920, Pope Benedict XV proclaimed Joan of Arc a saint
Art · People
Actaeon saw Artemis bathing, was turned into a stag and killed by his own hounds
“Actaeon”, 2012, a painting by the Scottish artist Paul Reid. While out hunting, Actaeon saw Artemis and her nymphs bathing and, instead of averting his gaze and turning away, he began to watch a spectacle not meant for his eyes. Artemis caught him peeping and turned him into a stag.
NB! · Monarchies · People
Peter I in the 1670s
Books · Monarchies · People · Saint Petersburg
Historian Adrien Richer on the deaths of Tsarevich Peter Petrovich and Tsarevich Alexey
In April 1719 Peter I's second son, Tsarevich Peter Petrovich, dies at the age of three and a half. The French historian Adrien Richer, in his History of … the Russians, published in 1770, suggests that Peter “felt that the priests and adherents of the old faith would not