It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a woman in possession of a love of history, must be in want of a blog.
I first heard of Circassia when working in Jordan, which has a small Circassian population. The Circassians I met there were Muslims and some of them wore the hijab, so I was intrigued by their light hair, blue-grey eyes and extremely pale skin. I decided to look them up, and found that Circassians are an …
Continue reading Circassia, home of the world’s most beautiful women
At the collapse of the USSR, all the public paraphernalia of Soviet rule - statues, mosaics, frescoes - still lay scattered across Russia and beyond. Marxism-Leninism may have been kicked out of office, but what were people supposed to do with the public propaganda artworks which, for many Soviet citizens, were an unwelcome symbol of …
Continue reading Russia’s dumping grounds for Soviet sculpture
Peter the Great, Tsar of Russia from 1682-1725, is one of the most compelling yet brutal rulers I have ever read about. On the one hand he was strongly influenced by the Enlightenment, a champion of science and a great builder of state and public institutions. On the other, he was a capricious autocrat who …