When the connoisseur Gerrit Braancamp died in 1771, the auction of his collection was one of Amsterdam’s events of the year. Some twenty thousand people saw it; two thousand copies of the catalogue were sold. The two most valuable paintings – a triptych by Gerard Dou known as ‘The Nursery’ and ‘Large Drove of Oxen’... Continue Reading →
The Archpriest Avvakum and the Third Rome that wasn’t
The Archpriest Avvakum Petrov spent the last fourteen years of his life in a pit in Pustozersk, high above the Arctic Circle. Born around 1620 in a small village in Nizhny Novgorod, he had become a leading figure among the Old Believers in the schism that split the Russian church in the 17th century. Patriarch... Continue Reading →
Bibliomania, a broken heart and a flight to Russia: the life of Elizabeth Justice
Elizabeth Justice was surely not alone in being young and unhappily married in 18th-century London. Where she was singular, however, was in how she responded to her circumstance. She insisted on separating from her husband, Henry Justice, after he “struck her such a blow on the head that it swelled much”. Then, when he persistently... Continue Reading →
Motherlands: In Search of Our Inherited Cities by Amaryllis Gacioppo; Exiles: Three Island Journeys by William Atkins
In 1688 a 19-year-old medical student from Berne named Johannes Hofer observed a condition that medicine had yet to define. Symptoms of this ‘melancholy delirium’ might include fever, disturbed sleep, palpitations, loss of appetite and anxiety – sometimes ultimately leading to death. Hofer noted the case of a fellow student from Berne, now living in... Continue Reading →
Stravinsky, Nijinsky and the riotous premiere of The Rite of Spring
It should have been a triumph. The premiere of Igor Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring on 29 May 1913 brought together the then up-and-coming composer with Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballet Russe company and its star dancer, Vaslav Nijinsky, who would choreograph the piece. Even the venue, the luxurious Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris, was new. There... Continue Reading →
The Protocols of Zion and the roots of a racist forgery
Down the centuries Jewish people have been blamed for everything from the Black Death to the Russian Revolution. But rarely has such race hate found more cogent expression than in The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. The Protocols purports to be the verbatim transcript of speeches made by a secret council of Jewish leaders... Continue Reading →
Dmitri Mendeleev and the discovery of the Periodic Table
It came to him in a dream, Dmitri Mendeleev told a friend. He had worried at the problem of how to classify the elements for three sleepless days and nights. Exhausted, he fell into a deep sleep and the answer came. Sadly, this may not be true. To begin with, Mendeleev – born in Siberia... Continue Reading →
Mathew Lyons 