Books · Society

French Author Vincent Delacroix's Book on Illegal Migrants, "The Little Boat", Longlisted for the International Booker Prize for Literature

French author Vincent Delacroix's book on illegal migrants, "The Little Boat", has been longlisted for the International Booker Prize for Literature. Vincent Delacroix, winner of the Académie Française's Grand Prix du Roman in 2009, examines the tragic deaths of illegal migrants who try to

Faith · Observations · Society · People · Rome

Pope Francis shows signs of improvement, but prognosis remains cautious on the thirteenth day of hospitalisation

This is how Pope Francis looked at the general audience in the Vatican on 12 February 2025, two days before his hospitalisation. Although the Pope's condition is reported to be showing signs of improvement, Vatican officials have stressed that "the prognosis remains guarded", as his hospitalisation

Books · Society

Since there are no significant political forces opposing the transformation of our world into a universal marketplace, the conflict of our time is a struggle to preserve one's humanity in an ever more artificial world

Julius Evola

Architecture · Moscow · Heritage · Society · Saint Petersburg

The Russian Academy of Architecture and Construction Sciences (RAACS) has published the minutes of a meeting of its Academic Council devoted to the preservation of Soviet modernist buildings of the 1960s to 1980s

The Russian Academy of Architecture and Construction Sciences (RAACS) has published the minutes of a meeting of its Academic Council devoted to the preservation of Soviet modernist buildings of the 1960s to 1980s. The decision to publish the minutes was taken on 12 February, in response to the lively debate

NB! · The East · Society · Humour

When "Constantinople" Was Said Instead of "Istanbul"

Archive · Cinema · Moscow · Observations · Society · Paris

Children wiping car windows at a Moscow intersection, as in 1990s films

Little Street Musicians of Montmartre, 1937. Remember how, in the films of the 1990s, children earning a living on city streets by washing car windscreens at junctions and selling chewing gum and flowers were a common sight? Then they vanished from view for a while, as the economic situation changed.

Observations · Education · Society · Humour

As They Used to Say at School: Now a Question to Catch You Out

By way of illustrating the fruits of the finest education in the world, after ten or twenty years of the nosediving standards of television and the media

NB! · Faith · Society · People · Rome

Pope Francis, 88, reported to be in critical condition in a Rome hospital

Art · Education · Society · People · Humour

The Best So Far on the Subject

The young Napoleon Bonaparte at his studies in Brienne (Jean Onfroy de Bréville, 1910). And the not-so-young Trump, who long ago stopped learning anything new.

NB! · Observations · Society · Humour

And that is before he has seen the new fares

Architecture · Faith · Art · Museums · Society · Paris

Digest of channel posts from the first two weeks of February on Paris, culture and history

A guide to the posts published on the channel in the first two weeks of February. Besides a great many posts about Paris, there was cultural news, surveys of social problems and astonishing stories from the past. 📌 The story of Saint Plautilla, who handed her veil to the Apostle Paul

Observations · Society · People

Do you remember the phrase attributed to Stalin, when he refused to exchange his son from his first marriage, Senior Lieutenant Yakov Dzhugashvili, for the former commander of the 6th Army in the Stalingrad "cauldron", Field Marshal Friedrich Paulus: "I d

This is a fairly commonplace formula for patriotic myths. Something similar is attributed to Barclay de Tolly, who was told of the death of his son during the Battle of Leipzig: "An officer has been killed; I beg you not to interrupt me, for now all children belong to