Although the themes of Adoration and the journey of the Magi seem to be more common in the Western tradition in art, they are by no means alien to the Orthodox tradition, and these two works by the R...
The Life of Klim Samgin is perhaps the most dramatic, deep and fateful novel by Maxim Gorky. In 1980s Victor Titov made it into a film....
As you know now, I finally got to listen to Secret ‘s music much later than I should have done . About the same time I was already listening to Edith Piaf, and I first couldn’t believe my ...
I still vividly remember how a clip “I Love Boogie-Woogie” by the Russian beat band, Secret , was coming up on TV, and my mother was switching channels despite my protests. I was deeply sa...
I noticed that Flickr link in my Lijit widget wasn’t working. I corrected it but I thought I’d use the opportunity to give you a peek at my “private” Flickr life. I started usi...
Some of you will instantly recognise a paraphrase of the title of Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter by Mario Vargas Llosa in the post’s title. I remember reading it in about 1998 in Moscow. I was ...
In September it will have been six years since I came to Britain. In all this time the majority of people I met never thought I came from Russia. When we spoke, they appeared to be very knowledgeable,...
I was reading The Times, the article by Mary Beard on examining the Cambridge essays. I am aware of this fundamental difference between the Russian and British education systems (although the Russian ...
When I write a “blog” here, it is about Arts and Culture, and the case of the late David Carradine fits both categories. I have seen him in a few of his B-movies before I watched his perfo...
A brief story of my discovering Alexander Pushkin and his work, as well as critical notes on the then and now reading habits and the state of language...