Art · Monarchies · Museums · People
Marie Antoinette, Queen of France, hunting with hounds. Louis-Auguste Brun, 1783. The painting is on display on the ground floor of Versailles. It is currently being shown at the exhibition of the Rothschild collection; last year it featured in the exhibition The King's Animals.
NB! · London · Monarchies · People
On 15 February 2002, fifty years after the funeral of King George VI, Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, the Queen Mother, made her last public appearance. It was the day of the funeral of her younger daughter, Princess Margaret, who had died of a stroke at the age of 71. The Queen
Art · Observations · People
Can you believe that this painting was made by Pablo Picasso? And yet it is so. The artist was then 15 years old. One wonders what must have happened for Picasso's style to undergo such a significant change
The East · Books · Monarchies · Mores · People
How a Russian noblewoman might have become Queen of Siam. "At the skating rink I often met a friend of my sister Galya, Katyusha Vesnitskaya, a senior schoolgirl at the Fundukleyev Girls' Gymnasium. My elder brother Borya was courting Katyusha. He used to waltz with her on skates.
NB! · Art · People · Humour
Archive · Cinema · People · Pop Culture
Why didn't Brendan Fraser play the Amphibian Man? Photo for Premier Magazine, 1998, Bob Frame
Archive · Books · People
The memoirs of the Decembrist Andrey Yevgenyevich Rosen contain a curious detail about the Decembrist Lunin. When Mikhail Sergeyevich Lunin, who had confessed under interrogation to proposing the murder of the Tsar on the road to Tsarskoye Selo, heard the sentence read out condemning him to penal servitude in perpetuity,
Faith · Observations · People · Rome
On the morning of 11 February 2013, Pope Benedict XVI announced his forthcoming voluntary abdication from the papal throne. "...in today's world, subject to so many rapid changes and shaken by questions of deep relevance for the life of faith, in order to govern the barque of
Art · People
Siegfried the Puppy. 1921. Thomas Theodor Heine (1867-1948)
NB! · Aristocracy · Art · People
Portrait of Felix Yusupov. Artist: Johannes Linse, 1920s
Cinema · Observations · People · Humour
Tell me, am I the only one who thinks the Governor of Bermuda in the early 1960s, Major-General Sir Julian Gascoigne, in old-fashioned full-dress uniform and pith helmet, looks like the chief antagonist of the first Jumanji film, the demented hunter Van P. And do not forget
NB! · In the Press · Society · People