After almost 4 years, The gate of Downton Abbey is finally opening again, for His Majesty King George V and Queen Mary, as well as for us! The year will be 1927, and Carson the Butler will have to come out of his retirement to help Mary prepare for the royal visit......

A brief refreshment on how the characters in Downton Abbey the TV series left us:Robert and Cora: After serious sickness, Robert took a step back from running Downton Abbey and the estate. His wife Cora became hospital president.

The Dowager Countess: Violet (played by Maggie Smith) reluctantly gave up her position of hospital president. 

Lady Mary: Lady Mary re-married after falling for dashing racing driver Henry Talbot (played by Matthew Goode) and was running Downton herself.

Lady Edith: married Bertie Pelham, forming a family of three with her illegitimate daughter Marigold, meanwhile starting a career in magazine publishing.
Anna and Bates: they had a baby

Tom Branson and Sybbie: Tom and his daughter returned from America to make Downton their home. He and Mary’s husband Henry set up an automobile shop in York – named Talbot and Branson Motors.

Isobel Crawley: Matthew Crawley’s mother, now called Isobel Grey decided to marry Lord Merton against the wishes of his daughter-in-law Amelia.

Carson and Mrs Hughes: The two of them tied the knot, but Mr Carson developed palsy and had to retire. 

Thomas Barrow: Survived his suicide attempt, returned to Downton Abbey and stepped into Carson’s shoes as butler.

And the good news is, all of the main characters will be coming back, and played by the same actors, what a joy!

-Hugh Bonneville as the Earl of Downton
-Elizabeth McGovern as Lady Cora
-Dame Maggie Smith as the Dowager Countess
-Michelle Dockery as Lady Mary
-Jim Carter as Carson the butler
- Joanne Froggatt as Anna Bates.
-Laura Carmichael as Lady Edith
-Lesley Nicol as Mrs Patmore
-Allen Leech as Tom Branson

In Downton Abbey the TV Series, the Dowager Countess, Violet said: "I hate Greek drama, where everything happens off-stage." And now perhaps she will be more satisfied, because Downton Abbey will be on stage again, with her, of course.

The film is scheduled to open in theatres on 13 September 2019 in the UK and on 20 September 2019 in North America.

Gloria Vanderbilt, the American heiress, socialite, artist, author, actress, fashion designer, died on June, 2019, at her own home in New York, at the age of 95.

Born on 20 February, 1924 in New York, into the wealthy Vanderbilt family, Gloria lost her father, the railroad heir Reginald Claypoole Vanderbilt (1880–1925) at age of two, and she lived with her mother Gloria Mogan((1904–1965), mostly in France, until her paternal aunt, Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney​ (1875-1942) thought little Gloria's mother was unfit as custodian of her niece, thus a very publicized and scandalous custodian trial began, resulting in Gertrude winning the custody of Gloria Vanderbilt. 

Although affected by this trial of century, Gloria Vanderbilt grew up to be a heathy woman of intelligence and talent. She started to model at age of 15, and in her early 20s, she started acting both on stage and in TV. She also painted and designed textile as well as glassware. 

But it was fashion design that gained her international acclaim and commercial success. She first launched jeans bearing her name with her business partner, then launched dresses, blouses, sheets, shoes, leather goods, liqueurs, and accessories, all on her own, and sold all of them later for huge profit.

Then she wrote.

With a life fully lived -- a priviledged birth, traumatic childhood, a variety of career, four husbands all related to world of art and drama(a Hollywood talent agent, a conductor, a director and a writer), numerous lovers from Howard Hughes to Frank Sinatra, together with challenging and tragic experiences as a mother: one of her sons Anderson Cooper, the prominent CNN tv anchor had decided as a teenager to embrace his different sexuality  when being gay was not widely accepted as it is today, another son Carter Cooper killed himself in front of her -- Gloria Vanderbilt seemed having a lot to tell, and she did, in five volumes of memoirs and three novels.

It seemed she has told everything she could about her life, her love, her romances and her son's tragic suicide, until a few years ago, in 2016, her son Anderson Cooper started to talk to her, in a different way, more daring and intimate, like he had never done before. Their conversation grew into a new book by mother and son.

Indeed.

Behind the veil of those lucky private privileges and the distorted public childhood, was an extraordinary woman, who had been searching for love and beauty, who was passionate about growing and creating, and who had finally acquired wisdom about love, joy, loss, death, and about life and living, about what we leave behind when we leave.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832) is Gerrmany's most famous poet and writer whose works have been translated into every major languages, and characters like Faust and Werther as references can been seen in every genre of art. In his long and pro folic life, he had also been playwright, botanist, geologist, optical scientist, politician, philosopher, literary historian, art critic, theorist and collector...During and after his life, he had also served as inspiration for other writers and artists like painters, sculptors as well as composers, photographers and even film directors.

The exhibition: Gothe, transformation of the World is the first major Goethe exhibition in 25 years held at Bonn's Bundeskunsthalle (the last major show of Gothe was held at Schirn Kunsthalle in 1984), featuring more than 300 works—including paintings, sculptures, drawings, prints, photographs, memorabilia, film and music—will present a synthetic account of Goethe’s life and work in nine thematic sections, mostly with historical examples. Among these are portraits of Goethe by Angelika Kauffmann and Heinrich Christoph Kolbe, Goethe’s notes for Werther, his annotated German translation of the Koran, Goethe’s own drawing of the appearance of the Earth Spirit from Faust, plus selections from his collections of minerals, maiolica and seals. 

These works will shed light on Gothe's life, the dawn of our modern world and on the history of the reception of his singular work.

The modern and contemporary works in the exhibition will help demonstrate how Goethe is “relevant”, both directly or indirectly.

The exhibition Christian Dior: designer of dreams has been extendeed until 1 September, 2019 in The Sainsbury Gallery, V&A museum, London, covering from 1947 when Christina Dior designed his first "New Look" bar suit, to the present day while the brand's latest creative director Maria Grazia Chiuri is trying to interpret Christian Dior's vision of elegance.
 to the present day while the brand's latest creative director Maria Grazia Chiuri is trying to interpret Christian Dior's vision of elegance.

This exhibition traces the history and impact of one of the 20th century's most influential couturiers, exploring the enduring influence of the fashion house, and Dior's relationship with Britain.

Christian Dior's career, a veritable fairy tale, is set in a rich tapestry of Paris cultural life before, during, and after the war. Much of Dior's daily inspiration emanated from the world of the intellectual and artistic elite, in which he moved with such people as Erik Satie, Francis Poulenc, Henry Sauguet, Jean Cocteau, and Raoul Dufy.
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​Born at the end of an era in which luxury seemed reserved only for the happy few, Dior again revolutionized the world of fashion by introducing, in the early 1950s, "ready-to-wear" in his Dior Boutique. Until then, couturiers had worked essentially if not exclusively for the very rich and famous. With his boutique, Dior brought high fashion to the world at large. In celebration of the 50th anniversary of the "New Look", New York's Metropolitan Museum mounted a major Dior retrospective in the winter of 1996-97.
Translated from the French by Joanna Savill.