Anna Akhmatova
Another heroic freethinker is wiped from Russian history
Vera Gedroits, the world’s first woman professor of surgery, inevitably fell foul of Stalin, despite supporting workers’ rights and saving hundreds of lives in the Russo-Japanese war
Shock and awe
‘Astonish me!’ was the celebrated demand that the impresario Sergei Diaghilev made of Jean Cocteau when he was devising Erik…
Mother courage
Helen Stevenson’s daughter Clara has cystic fibrosis. Love Like Salt is an account of living with the disease, but it…
Tribes of one
The British painter Nina Hamnett recalled that Modigliani had a very large, very untidy studio. Dangling from the end of…
