I never expected to bump into Nadezhda Babkina on Telegram, having last seen her on a bottle of mango-flavoured Pepsi in the company of Timothée

I never expected to bump into Nadezhda Babkina on Telegram, having last seen her on a bottle of mango-flavoured Pepsi in the company of Timothée. So far Babkina has only given RTVI an interview about some denunciations. I am certain that this time nobody asked her about so little-known an episode, unearthed by me in its day from the archival dust, as her appearance in the American press in 1989, where she offered expert commentary on the ban on balalaikas in Russia in the sixteenth century. That, I rather think, would be genuinely interesting to hear about.

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September digest: archaeological finds, exhibitions, museums, theatre and the Church

In the finale of the Strugatskys' Roadside Picnic, the Golden Ball is told: "Happiness for everybody, free, and let nobody go away unsatisfied!" I do not promise to offend nobody, but the digest really does come free of charge. So, here is the main business of the

Frederic Leighton

Frederic Leighton. “Daedalus and Icarus”, 1869 Daedalus warns his son not to climb too high: the heat of the sun may melt the wax, but Icarus is already gazing into the distance, and the lamentations of a foolish old man interest him not in the least

I never expected to bump into Nadezhda Babkina on Telegram, having last seen her on a bottle of mango-flavoured Pepsi in the company of Timothée

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September digest: archaeological finds, exhibitions, museums, theatre and the Church

Frederic Leighton

Attempts to resolve the problems of many years of uncontrolled mass migration

Characters from Gogol's "Petersburg Tales" on the pedestal of the monument to Nikolai Gogol on Nikitsky Boulevard, photograph of the 1960s