Philip Wilkinson is the author of over 40 books, including The English Buildings Book, and a new book called The High Street, written in conjunction with a major BBC TV series. Happily for us, he's also the curator of the English Buildings Blog, a firm favorite here at The Dabbler. ... Read More...
Month: October 2010
Accompanied by a family-nan, there is surely no more restorative, tasty and cheap meal to be found anywhere than a Balti. It means 'bucket' in Hindi, and was invented in Birmingham. I gather it's a version of the wok-cooked curries of the Pakistan highlands - the source of a good ... Read More...
The Dabbler interviews illustrative artist Tim Lane… Some months ago I was idling around the more arcane shops of Bristol, searching in what seemed like vain for the perfect birthday gift for a close relation, when I found a print of the above picture and - that rare thing – instantly ... Read More...
Antiques Roadshow just keeps on trucking, doesn't it? Personally I find it a source of huge comfort in our ever-changing world. There will always be an England whilst there's a new series of AR showing on Sunday nights. It gives a peculiar insight into the middle-of-the-road genius of the English: drenched ... Read More...
If you would like to read the funniest book in the English language, get hold of Jerome K Jerome's Three Men in a Boat (available for 1p - or even less - here) Take no notice of those who tell you to read The Diary of a Nobody by George Grossmith ... Read More...
In our occasional feature we invite guests to select the six cultural links that might sustain them if, by some mischance, they were forced to spend eternity in a succession of airport departure lounges with only an iPad or similar device for company.You might want to don your regulation-issue Chilean ... Read More...
I would sum up my fear about the future in one word: boring. And that's my one fear: that everything has happened; nothing exciting or new or interesting is ever going to happen again... the future is just going to be a vast, conforming suburb of the soul. J. G. Ballard Aerial ... Read More...
Tate Modern's Gauguin exhibition would be worth going to if you only visited one of the rooms, the one called 'Making the Familiar Strange'. It provides a contrast with most of the rest of Gauguin's oeuvre which is more concerned with 'Making the Strange even Stranger' (in Brittany and then, ... Read More...
The Dabbler is delighted to bring you an exclusive competition. Slightly Foxed - producers of 'The Real Reader’s Quarterly' - are giving away a free annual subscription to one lucky dabbler. This is a real treat for booklovers – each issue of the Slightly Foxed magazine is packed full of witty, beautifully-written ... Read More...
Continuing both the recent nonfuturist and general retroprogressive themes of this blog, this Sunday we have some early electronica and some recent folk music. Louis & Bebe Barron were an avant-garde husand-and-wife team of what we are obliged by the laws of music journalism to call electronica ‘pioneers’. They used mathematical equations to ... Read More...
