Here's this week's fiendish Round Blogworld Quiz question (see the previous ones and their solutions here). As usual, find the link between these cryptic clues. A point for each item you get, and an imaginary cream bun if you get them all. This is one where you might get the ... Read More...
Month: January 2011
James Hamilton continues his 'The Football Fan Delusion' mini-series by recalling the 'Golden Age' of the 1970s with rather less fondness than the average English football fan... Even in football, there’s almost always been a golden age. In 1919 the FA Committee – mourning the Great War deaths of sons and ... Read More...
For a Burns Night special, we take a break from London's National Gallery and head to Edinburgh in our series looking at artistic national treasures... The Skating Minister or, to give it its full title, The Reverend Robert Walker Skating on Duddingston Loch (c.1795) is a much-loved painting, and indeed, who could fail ... Read More...
The first Burns Supper took place on the 21st July 1801, on the anniversary of Robert Burns’ death five years before. Nine of his friends gathered to toast his memory and recite his poems over an offal and whisky soused dinner. It was so successful that they met again on ... Read More...
Continuing our series looking at great paintings housed in London's National Gallery... For such an intimately and widely known painter it's amazing how the works of Vincent Van Gogh retain the ability to make you look again, even when seen on screen. Even his landscapes and still lifes remain gripping. In ... Read More...
On the eve of Burns Night (25 January), this question is on the lips of the nation. After all; Scots, honorary Scots and wannabe Scots (and who doesn’t?) all gather on this night to eat haggis, recite his poems (badly) and drink whisky. And so we need to know, just in ... Read More...
In perhaps the same way that the key of E flat Major inspires the heroic in music (Sibelius below, Beethoven's Eroica and Emperor Concerto), the number 5 often seems to produce something rather special. Since I began posting on Lazy Sunday the comestibles have been short bon-bons or, to borrow ... Read More...
I haven’t been to Japan for quite a few years, but there’s been plenty of coverage of the Japanese fashion industry in the UK recently. In particular, the ongoing exhibition at the Barbican, Future Beauty: 30 years of Japanese Fashion. Promoting itself as ‘the first exhibition in Europe to comprehensively ... Read More...
Toby Ash, The Dabbler’s Most South-Westerly Tip of England Correspondent, reports from the beautiful island of Tresco, which is just off the Cornish coast in case you were wondering Last week I was fortunate enough to fly off in a helicopter to the beautiful island of Tresco, situated some 30 miles ... Read More...
This week’s exciting activity project is to spruce up your mud idol. It is probably languishing, neglected, matted with dust and cobwebs and harried by bats, up in your attic, so before reading on you had better go and fetch it. Mission accomplished? Excellent. Now, the first thing to do is ... Read More...
