Saul Zaentz, who won fistfuls of Oscars with One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and Amadeus, both directed by Milos Forman, has died aged 92. Amadeus, the most successful composer biopic of all time, is founded on the fantastical premise that Mozart was murdered by Salieri.

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We’ve been sent the fascinating video memoirs of Professor George L. Mosse (1918-1999), who grew up in a wealthy Jewish household in Berlin and, as a child, got to know many of its cultural lions. Mosse was sent to boarding school in England when Hitler came to power. He made his name in the US as a formidable historian. His best known work is The Crisis of German Ideology: Intellectual Origins of the Third Reich (1965).

Watch.

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h/t: Daniella Grunfeld.

A fascinating essay from Michael Johnson, revisiting the years when the best Russian literature came in cyclostyled sheets, passed from hand to hand. Read and learn. 

samizdat