I don’t know the full story of the family archive, particularly of where the postcards came from. The postcards below, however, bear inscriptions in German, and I do know that my great granduncl...
It’s been a couple of years already that Mr Freeman has been the mystery no. 1 on the Russian Internet. Although there have been many a guess who may be hiding behind this matchstick man, the re...
Tony Richardson who for years has religiously been documenting the beauty of the Cumbrian Lakes supplied us with a few fascinating photos of the total lunar eclipse. The first photo was taken in Conis...
A few people recently have shared their “success recipes”. One comes from Elena Lenina, the most famous Russian in modern France. According to her, success is granted on the following four...
Victoria and Albert Museum 36, originally uploaded by loscuadernosdejulia. I‘ve noticed someone watching the V&A Museum set on Flickr, and so decided to share one of my favourite photos from...
I have just risked my health by opening the kitchen window to take a few photos. We’re having a slow and silent snowfall in Moscow. It is by no means catastrophic, rather magical and serene. Wha...
In our family archive we have several newspapers that date back to the pre-Revolution times. One of them has just marked its 90th anniversary, and if you flick through the pages of the embedded docume...
I mentioned in a previous post that in the English-language literature the genre of villanelle has acquired the depth it didn’t use to have as a Mediterranean-born dance-song. You could see how ...
Previously on this blog you have found and read If I Could Tell You by W. H. Auden. It was a villanelle, a poetic form adopted by the English poetry in the 18th c. To England it came from Italy and Sp...
What would have happened if we had never had this wildly passionate and funny performance of Suspicious Minds? Apart from seeing the range of Presley’s singing and acting abilities, we wouldn...