If you are travelling to Wales this year, make sure to visit Valle Crucis abbey. It is a fascinating place, and the ruins against the sky and clouds leave the most indelible impression....
In the first year of this blog I happened to be anticipating the release of Quiet Flows the Don (2006) whereby I was researching the subject and came across Sholokhov’s 1926 manuscript. It was a...
The poem is a lullaby; the Poet tells the story of a secret room where, under the lock, are stored all the wonders of the world. Medieval landscape and feel of Czech and Slovak cities and towns are vi...
I‘ve just read the synopsis of The Diamond Arm (Brilliantovaya Ruka), a 1968 film by Leonid Gaidai, and it crossed my mind that it can be viewed as a comic improvisation on the theme of Hitchcoc...
The X Certificate, once used by the British Board of Film Classification, was first awarded on the 9th of January 1951, 60 years ago. As the tag suggested, it was used to mark “adult-only”...
It is not true that children shouldn’t think of romantic adventures; the tale of Nutcracker is a good example of how this juvenile adventurism can do magic. In Valek’s collection of poems,...
I have discovered that someone landed on the blog while searching for Miroslav Valek‘s poem, Little Mice. To serious students of poetry, especially in Slavic languages, the name of Valek (1927-1...
I have translated this song previously into Russian, now it’s the turn for English rendition. I like this particular, romantic and tender, version. Once again, Polnareff gently attacks the socie...
As we know, we in Russia adore winter sports, especially skiing. There is nothing better than to glide along a path in the blazing winter sunshine, cutting through the luxurious soft snows, catching t...