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From across the pond
to return from the road trip across the USto London, with familiar mews, crescents and turns,yet there are more streets than i can count. to show one beast to another,who did not walk here for three decades.much has changed in the docks, in the City, in everywhere,but not the darkroom in St Martin-in-the-Fields’ crypt. not […]
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A sketch for the centenary
My paternal grandfather Mikhail Gefter was a historian, philosopher, intellectual. As an adult, years after his death I learned of his pupils throughout the world, of his philosophical and historical writings, and of the www.gefter.ru platform for social sciences and intellectual thought named after him. Many called him МЯ (Михаил Яковлевич – Mikhail Yakovlevich). I called […]
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12 Bernstein
It was in the Summer 2016 when I first encountered the story of the derelict building at 12 Sholem Aleichem street (formerly Bernstein street). I came to Lviv to research Debora Vogel and her literary and artistic circles of the inter-war period. Wherever I turned I seemed to hear about the building – Google, resources at the Lviv Centre for Urban […]
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Ukraine..August 24
Today is August 24 and Ukraine celebrates 25th anniversary of Independence Day. On a personal note, my grandfather was born on this day 98 years ago, in 1918. Interestingly, The Ukrainian People’s Republic, a predecessor of modern Ukraine, proclaimed its independence on 25 January 1918 (simple maths means he was a 2months baby in the […]
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London Pride
Bright, festive, proud, out-spoken, warm, open, welcoming..
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East End markets
Bishopsgate Institute asked me to join Diane Burstein, London guide and author of ‘London Then and Now’, on today’s Sunday morning stroll around the East End markets – Petticoat Lane, Spitalfields, Brick Lane, Cheshire Street, Columbia Road. Mind-blowing how the area and the markets have changed since I moved to London 12 years ago. But […]
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Impromptu from the Carpathians
Last month I reconnected with the places of my childhood holidays – Lviv and the Carpathian mountains in Western Ukraine. This area (former Galicia) was for centuries on the crossroads between Middle and Eastern Europe, and so it is small wonder that it has become a melting pot of people and cultures – Ukrainian, Jewish, […]
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Winter at Kew Gardens
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Tales from the Ditch
Alan Gilbey, curator/guide, BAFTA Award-winning writer and East End guru: ‘Tales From The Ditch’ is an anthology of tales less told from London’s ‘little bit of rough’, as narrated by an eclectic selection of local authors, historians, storytellers and musicians, who were hidden in all the nooks and crannies of the basement of Shoreditch Town Hall. Each of these […]