From Russia with Love

A collection of 36 posts

From Russia with Love

A Fire in Oxford Street

The fire broke out early evening in Oxford Street in the offices above a store, when irate customers complained that the notes they had received at the cash register had turned into blank pieces of paper. Police have not commented on their investigations, which are considered unsolved at this time.

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From Russia with Love

The Devil in London

From Russia with Love

A Night in Belgravia

The conversation upstairs did not go well. A nasty exchange. "I thought we made it clear to you last time," said Fagot. "After Evita... You thought we wouldn't come back? You thought we wouldn't notice anything? You don't think that fire

From Russia with Love

Agnostic

To find out if you are an agnostic, start here (Putin's Kiss) or here (Pictures at an Exhibition) or here (The Poisoning of Litvinenko). YOU ARE AN AGNOSTIC This means you think anything is possible. You think it is possible for contradictions to be explained. Indeed you don&

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

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

From Russia with Love

Chessboard

(play) "In the heart of a Russian, it's always winter," wrote Yuri Kozyrev in Time Magazine. As a courageous photojournalist, Kozyrev has seen the ugly and the violent many times over, from Chechnya to Baghdad. But he's channeling Gogol, Dostoyevsky, Gorky, maybe Tolstoy... Writers

From Russia with Love

Covent Garden

At the hedge fund company they had two things to sort out. First, Christies had a request from Moscow to show Picasso's Angel and one of the potential buyers was thought to be Mrs. Putin. "Well this complicates things. If the Russians are interested I think we

From Russia with Love

Cynic

To find out if you are a cynic, start here (Putin's Kiss) or here (Pictures at an Exhibition) or here (The Poisoning of Litvinenko). YOU ARE A CYNIC Do you believe in anything really? Politics maybe. Everyone is a potential enemy in Russia: Litvinenko had many enemies and

From Russia with Love

'Evita'

Margaritas and Madonnas Evita began life in 1976 as a collection of songs, possibly inspired by Margarita from Bulgakov's The Master & Margarita. There is a chance that the key song back then was "Don't cry for me, Mother Russia," but Lloyd-Webber and Tim

From Russia with Love

'Jesus Christ Superstar'

In Mikhail Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita, Pontius Pilate ambivalently consigns a terrorist, who suspiciously resembles Jesus Christ, to execution. Was the novel an inspiration for the rock opera Jesus Christ Superstar? Or was it inspired by Nikolai Ge's brooding painting Quod Est Veritas? (What is

From Russia with Love

King's Cross Station

She was a woman on fire, spotted at King’s Cross station – her halo up-piled black and beehived above her head. The pale-faced man with the video camera and the bad teeth – everyone there had bad teeth – followed her across the platform. A killer. When he got back to the

From Russia with Love

London Floods

"I always enjoy London in the rain. Don't see why Russians hate the climate here. Like Russia is any better?" The man turned to the woman next to him. "They were Russian Mafia, you know. I'd rather go with that guy who did

From Russia with Love

Mikhail Vrubel's 'Demon Seated in a Garden'

Did you start here? Vrubel's paintings are dark, possessed, hallucinations - this was from 1890 and it is his most famous painting. We live in a fallen world, a world for pessimists. Art fans are drawn to the innovative use of color and the iridescent sheen, as a

From Russia with Love

Tchaikovsky's 'The Nutcracker' and 'Swan Lake'

Tchaikovsky's The Nutcracker occupies an ambiguous place in Russian ballet because, even more than Swan Lake, it has been adopted in the West as a quintessential family ballet, devoid of its original Russian essence, pushed out by sugar and spice and all things nice. The Russians are aware

From Russia with Love

Optimist

To find out if you are an optimist, start here (Putin's Kiss) or here (Pictures at an Exhibition) or here (The Poisoning of Litvinenko). YOU ARE AN OPTIMIST You are not a pessimist or a cynic or an agnostic. Eve in the Garden of Eden. You believe in

From Russia with Love

Pessimist

To find out if you are a pessimist, start here (Putin's Kiss) or here (Pictures at an Exhibition) or here (The Poisoning of Litvinenko). YOU ARE A PESSIMIST You are not an optimist, or a cynic, or an agnostic. You are a believer but you see the worst

From Russia with Love

'The Phantom of the Opera'

The picture below shows the original phantom, the original Angel of Music of the Night, Angel Fernández de Soto, with his white mask-like face. He is the opera ghost and music lover from underground... When he wasn't on public view, his painting hung on the walls of Lloyd-Webber&

From Russia with Love

Pictures at an Exhibition

The current sparring between London and Moscow (I wrote this originally in 2008 and it's worse now!) is like a fight between two casts in an old opera-house where the English think they are doing Andrew Lloyd-Webber and the Russians want to do something else, something Russian, but

From Russia with Love

Putin as Gay Icon

Bare-chested Putin When asked why he kissed the boy, Putin later explained that "He seemed to me very independent, sure of himself and at the same time defenceless so to speak, an innocent boy and a very nice little boy...I tell you honestly, I just wanted to stroke

From Russia with Love

Repin's 'Easter Procession in the Region of Kursk'

Did you start here? This painting from 1880-83 by Ilya Yefimovich Repin represents the agnostic option. Agnostics generally enjoy the grand sweep of history, even when it has a religious aspect. Agnostics are more likely to become absorbed by the detail in this picture, in the lives of other people,

From Russia with Love

Roerich's 'Guests from Overseas'

Did you start here? Because this is the cynical option – are they Viking invaders or are they guests? How do you feel about immigration? Or maybe these are Russians arriving in London? Cynicism is governed by self-interest and none of the other paintings has a sense of humor. There are

From Russia with Love

Soviet Propaganda

One of the most ironic Soviet propaganda posters, this one from 1941, during the war effort. "Do not blab" it says. Yet before and after the war that's exactly what everybody did to survive: denounce other people. It went hand in hand with denouncing the West.

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Sturgeon Kiss

A Croatian critic ripped Putin for the photo below, saying: "With the gesture of an experienced porn star, fixing the observer with his chill gaze, Putin is sending an indirect kiss to the gay population: the long, slippery sturgeon in his hands could be a penis, and Putin is

From Russia with Love

The Bronze Horseman

If there is an iconic image of Russian imperial power and looking westward toward Europe, it is this enormous statue of Peter the Great, funded by his successor Catherine the Great, in Saint Petersburg. Known as The Bronze Horseman, it famously was celebrated in a hallucinatory Pushkin poem of 1833