Science · Society · People
The US Office of Research Integrity has officially announced a 15-year ban on federal funding for the chemist Ariel Fernandez, a former professor at Rice University. The investigation, begun in 2009 on a tip from his own graduate student, lasted 17 years. Fernandez stands accused of fabricating data in
Cinema · Science · People · Nature
On 8 May David Attenborough turns one hundred. No one in history has shown the whole world for so long how life on this planet is put together. At 99 he managed, last year, to make one more film, Ocean, in which for the first time he spoke openly of
Archive · Faith · The East · Society · People
After he burned the portrait of Lenin, he was arrested, beaten and declared mentally ill, then dispatched for compulsory treatment to a psychiatric hospital. He died in 1995 and was later canonised as a saint.
Archive · Moscow · Society · People
On 27 April 1963 Castro flew secretly to Murmansk in a Tu-114 and spent forty days in the USSR, the first visit by the Cuban leader to the Soviet Union. Khrushchev needed to mend relations after the Cuban Missile Crisis: six months earlier Moscow had withdrawn its missiles from
Archive · Monarchies · Society · People
This remarkable phrase appears in the testament of Grand Duke Dmitry Donskoy. The whole sentence runs thus: "And should God change the Horde, my children shall not be obliged to give the tribute to the Horde, and whichever of my sons takes tribute in his own appanage, to him
Moscow · Observations · Society · People
I remember Election Night in March 2018. It was his sixth presidential defeat, yet Zhirinovsky climbs onto the stage without any visible disappointment. A short speech on how the political landscape would change in the years ahead. We applaud more out of inertia: the result has been announced, though everything
Art · Books · London · Society · People
His father, the poet Ai Qing, cleaned latrines in a labour camp. Ai Weiwei himself was detained in 2011 for 81 days without charge. His studio was demolished, his exhibitions were shut down, and the Chinese chatbot DeepSeek was specially configured so as not to know of his existence. The
Art · Cinema · People · Pop Culture
Among the lots are the original script of "Annie Hall" with no title on the cover (estimate $2,000-3,000), a Ralph Lauren Purple Label houndstooth jacket ($200-300), and works from her collection: Rauschenberg, Ed Ruscha, Annie Leibovitz, Jack Nicholson. Also her own collages and photographs,
Art · Books · People · Pop Culture
Mary GrandPré was offered the illustration of the first Harry Potter book in the late 1990s by an editor at Scholastic, and at first she declined: her schedule simply would not allow so large a project. The editor nevertheless talked her round, and by the third book, in her own
The East · Art · Books · People · Ethnography
Jean-Baptiste Tavernier was the son of a map engraver, became a dealer in precious stones and from 1623 crossed the road from Paris to Persia, and onward into India, six times. He traded at the courts of the Great Mughals and brought back from India a diamond that later
Coming Up · Archive · London · Paris · People
This is a photograph by Lee Miller, taken during the German bombing of London, which began in September 1940 and continued until May 1941. The Luftwaffe attacked the city for 57 nights in succession. The raids destroyed or damaged more than a million buildings and killed about 43,000 civilians.
Archive · Books · People · Ethnography
Yesterday we read the verse of Apollon Korinfsky; today let us see what he looked like. The photograph, from 1914, shows Apollon Korinfsky with his family on holiday. Apollon Apollonovich Korinfsky was born in 1868 in Simbirsk and died in 1937 in Tver, in exile, by then quite an elderly