Two Miles High

From Russia with Love

'Boris Godunov'

Like any other country, Russia relives its past myths and they can be bloody, which is why Russia's artists have frequently attacked the culture of violence by showing its ugliness. In the deeply upsetting painting above, Ivan the Terrible embraces his dying son. What isn't shown

The Age of Consent

Hieronymus Bosch and 'The Garden of Earthly Delights'

This is the left panel of the triptych known as The Garden of Earthly Delights, this panel being The Garden of Eden, or Joining of Adam and Eve, and it can be interpreted a number of ways. You just know the forbidden fruit is next. The full triptych is here.

How to Look at a Naked Lady

Bruno Bettelheim

Bruno Bettelheim was a brilliant man but, faults or not, he has been the victim of some extraordinary character assassinations, enough to make one wonder about the sanity of his inquisitors. Consider the evaluation below and wonder what was really on their minds... Executive summary: Fraudulent child psychologist Many of

Beauty & the Beast

'Burnt Norton'

Burnt Norton (above) is a country house in the Cotswolds in Gloucestershire. Nowadays people like to get married there, but back in the 1930's, T.S. Eliot visited it frequently and the house and its rose garden evoked in him a nostalgia for Britain’s faded splendor and

Splendour in the Grass

Byron's Women

Let's tackle five of them. The first three were married when they had an affair with Byron and all were older than him. The aristocracy of the Regency era indulged in frequent love affairs and this was well accepted as long as the players showed discretion in public.

Dreaming of the Virgin Mary

Byzantium - Timeline

* 150 Protoevangelium of James (Gospel of James) * 325 First Council of Nicaea * 330 Foundation of the city of Constantinople * 410 Rome sacked by the Visigoths (and St. Augustine begins The City of God) * 430 Death of St. Augustine of Hippo * 431 Council of Ephesus (Nestorius exiled 4 years later) * 451

Sacred Prostitute

Antonio Canova's Magdalenes

In Italian it is known as Maddalena penitente and it is from 1796. Above is Maddalena Giacente (Recumbent Magdalene) (1819-1822), which Canova completed shortly before his death, was "found" again 200 years after his death. It was to be auctioned by Christies in 2022 but there has been

Voices and Saints

Capture at Compiègne

Joan of Arc was captured by the Burgundians at the siege of Compiègne in 1430 in controversial circumstances - did the city close the gates too soon and strand her outside the walls? Below is a painting of the siege from a late 15th century French illustrated book of poems

Alice's Mirrors

Caravaggio's 'Judith Beheading Holofernes'

Caravaggio painted the infamous picture shown below in 1598. The following year a Roman noblewoman Beatrice Cenci was executed for her part in a lurid murder of her father, who reportedly had raped her repeatedly. Beheading was a common form of execution at the time and this painting got everyone&

The Whore's Revenge

Casanova and Academia

Casanova would not live to see how later generations would discourage the genre of autobiography, seeing it as egotistical. Universities still avoid him like a venereal disease: his memoirs are almost never taught in university classes. In literature departments, the erotic arts are limited to the classes where de Sade,

The Whore's Revenge

Later Casanova portraits

The portrait of Casanova below is said to be around 1788 when he was 63 years old and living in Bohemia at Dux (Duchcov). It is an engraving that appeared in the front of his only work of fiction, Icosameron (1788), a long and rambling utopian fantasy which had the

The Whore's Revenge

Casanova in his Twenties

This is the most well known portrait of Giacomo Casanova; it was painted around 1750-1755 by his brother Francesco Casanova. Casanova was born in Venice in 1725 and, for the first few decades, his home was in the central area of the city, just west of the large Campo Santo

The Whore's Revenge

Casanova's Henrietteʔ

It is speculated that she was Adélaide de Gueidan. This is her in a painting "Adélaïde de Gueidan et sa sœur au clavecin" ("Adelaide de Gueidan and her Younger Sister on Cembalo" (harpsichord) by Claude Arnulphy, circa 1735-40. I have also seen it attributed (wrongly?) to

The Whore's Revenge

Casanova's 'Histoire de ma Vie'

This is a watercolor illustration to a 1932 French edition of Casanova's Histoire de ma Vie, by the influential Auguste Leroux. There is ample historical evidence that in past centuries people had a first sleep which began about two hours after dusk, followed by waking period of one

Immortal Beloved

Castle Square, Teplice, Czech Republic

Beethoven knew it as Teplitz, at a time when the majority population spoke German - above. It was a popular spa town for artists, writers and the aristocracy and Beethoven met Goethe here in 1812 and began writing Symphony No. 7. Above is the Castle Square today, Zámecké námestí in

Precious Bodily Fluids

Castrati

Many volumes have been written about castrati - perhaps because this is not your "normal" kind of history. While there were castrati in the Byzantine and Ottoman empires, they did not appear as singers in Italy until the 1550s. Castration was performed by cutting the blood supply to

Dreaming of the Virgin Mary

Cathars

The Cathars inspire rapturous histories nowadays and some of it is deserved. Why shouldn't reincarnation be more meaningful than eternal damnation and Original Sin? But the reality is: they have left no churches, no monuments, no writings. The most striking memento they have left us is their wonderful

From Russia with Love

'Cats'

The inspiration for Cats is said to be T.S. Eliot's Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats (1939). Or was it Behemoth in Mikhail Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita? In this painting you can see Sophia Kramskaya and Mr. Mistoffelees at rest... The inspiration

Letters from Africa

'Ceddo'

“Ceddo is not a tribe, it is a state of mind” - director Ousmane Sembène The following is excerpted from a Michael Dembrow article on the 1977 film: "Sembène wants us to look at the past only to the extent that this will help us to analyze the present.

Life as Opera

Céleste Mogador

Céleste Mogador, real name Élisabeth-Céleste Vénard, was born in 1824 in Paris. The biographies say that at the age of 16, in order to escape an intolerable family situation, she registered as a courtesan and immediately regretted it, but couldn't get it reversed. The photo above is from

A Tale of Two Women

Cervantes and Pedro de Urdemales

Pedro is a mysterious figure who gets very little credit in the stories of the Conquest but he certainly got around. Even if the historians ignore him, he appears in Latin American folklore all the way from New Mexico, Puerto Rico and Guatemala to Argentina and Chile, where he is

Precious Bodily Fluids

Miguel de Cervantes

Where are the Cervantes pilgrimage sites? Start with Esquivias, Sevilla, Valladolid, and Madrid. Cervantes was born in Alcalá de Henares, near Madrid, in 1547, but his family moved away when he was very young. Esquivias is a small town off the A-42 from Madrid to Toledo. It is where Cervantes

The Woman in the Bower

Chapbooks

Chapbooks were the original "street literature" or pop culture from the 16th century onwards, and they often were read aloud since not enough people knew how to read. They were called chapbooks because they were sold by peddlers known as "chapmen" - usually printed on single

Splendour in the Grass

Charles Kingsley's 'The Water Babies'

I read Charles Kingsley's The Water Babies, A Fairy Tale for a Land Baby (1862-63) as a kid. Didn't like it - too depressing - but then I didn't much like Alice in Wonderland either and now I love it. But, comfortable Victorian children

Voices and Saints

Chartres Cathedral

If it's for you, virginity and spousal union with Christ can best be experienced at places like Chartres Cathedral, which was dedicated to the Virgin Mary. It has profoundly affected many men and women, such as Joseph Campbell, ever since it was built in the 12th and 13th