All the artists gathered here died in their 30's, and music lovers the world over have in each case speculated on what they might have produced had they lived for just a few more years. Mozart is the touchstone in this game of dreaming, as the muse stayed with him ... Read More...
Year: 2010
Why do all drugs have sci-fi names? I am currently taking some antibiotics called Zithromax, which, as any ful kno, is a planet in the Paracetomol system ruled over by the evil Lord Seroxat whose regime is constantly threatened by the rebellion led by the brave warrior Benadryl. Meanwhile, the ... Read More...
I’m simultaneously horrified, intrigued and amused by the burgeoning number of gaudy Christmas light displays in Britain – a trend which, surely, must have originated in America? The less accessible the location, the more rampant the urge to decorate seems to be. The season of goodwill becomes something of a battle ... Read More...
Channel 4's lavish production of William Boyd's Any Human Heart may have tempted you to buy the novel, though I would question why: it seemed to me to consist of just one damn thing after another, the pace being kept chugging along by a death every ten minutes or so. Despite ... Read More...
As an addendum to Sabine Baring-Gould Week at Hooting Yard, here is an extract from the great man's biography of the eccentric Robert Stephen Hawker, The Vicar Of Morwenstow (1886): The people of Wellcombe are very ignorant. Indeed, a good deal of ignorance lingers still in the West of England. The ... Read More...
Ben Atherton is a Brisbane-based journalist, dad, misty-eyed expat and sometime blogger on books and bookmen at Biblioparrot. We welcome him to our small (and virtual) piece of the old country here at The Dabbler. Back in the good old days, when I was trying to get my first job on newspapers, ... Read More...
[The story so far… Ed Balls is determined to 'squash' his rival Ed Milliband; Boris Johnson's Latvian Nanny is on the trail of the Black Rabbit; Art Garfunkel and Elton John have been plagiarising Alain de Botton's Tweets; and Rod Lidl has been given an anonymous tip-off regarding the whereabouts of elusive poet ... Read More...
Well done to Worm and Adelephant for getting it, even the bonus questions. For anyone who's given up, click continue for the full answers.... 6775 ... Read More...
Thank you to everyone who entered our competition to win a Christmas Fox. Most of you correctly identified the illustrator of Scrooge's third visitor (the Ghost of Christmas Past) as John Leech. The three winners picked at random were: - Nancy B. Thompson of Amherst, Massachusetts - Shahla Haque of London; and - Miranda Harris ... Read More...
Right, by popular request here's another fiendish Round Blogworld Quiz question (see the previous ones and their solutions here). Ripped off from Based on Radio 4's long-running Round Britain Quiz, the idea is to find the link between these cryptic clues. A point for each item you get, and an imaginary cream ... Read More...
