On Good Friday we looked back at some of the best posts from the regular Dabblers. For Easter Monday here are some more repeats as we select some of our favourite guest posts of 2011 so far... First up, don’t miss critic and linguist Henry Hitchings’ thought-provoking article on the language ... Read More...
Month: April 2011
A Lazy Easter Sunday special from Mahlerman... If a belief in Christianity produces good results - if it produces great art and music, if it makes people kinder, more compassionate, more concerned about the poor - does it matter if it is true or not? Giovanni Pergolesi was born near Ancona in ... Read More...
Today the word Regency smacks more of ‘limousine’ hire companies and engagement ring websites than fashionable restraint in behaviour and dress. Regency style has become synonymous with televised period dramas, fancy dress costume…and weddings. It’s a curious fact that wedding fashion is still largely inspired by a brief period of history ... Read More...
If you’ve got some time to kill this Easter weekend, why not spend a while perusing the Dabbler’s back pages. Here are some of the finest Dabbles of 2011 thus far from our regular contributors… Brit and Worm took on celebrity chefs Jamie Oliver and Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall respectively, while Gaw took ... Read More...
There were two high points to my Easter Sundays when I was a child. First, waking up to find that the Easter Bunny had indeed come a-hopping and left me a chocolate egg at the bottom of my bed. The second was the trip to Butser Hill to roll painted ... Read More...
Long ago, in the last century, I was commissioned by Thumping & Learned Tomes, erstwhile publishers of thumping, learned tomes, to write a thumping, learned tome about Sir Isaac Newton. Specifically, I was to focus on Newton’s politics. Even more specifically, I was to concentrate on his time as a ... Read More...
While the music is performed, the cameras linger savagely over the faces of the audience [below]. What a bottomless chasm of vacuity they reveal! The huge faces bloated with cheap confectionery and smeared with chain-store makeup, the open, sagging mouths and glazed eyes, the hands mindlessly drumming in time to ... Read More...
Once, browsing the net for myself (could this be an eighth deadly sin, I wonder?), I found my name among those of alleged notability who had been born in Kidderminster. I appreciate that Kiddey, as locals term it, is probably under-endowed celeb-wise but this seemed a step too far. Anyway, ... Read More...
Our friends at Pan Macmillan have now dispatched Simon Winder's Germania to the lucky winners of our first Book Club ballot. If you’re one of them, do email your initial thoughts on the book to editorial@thedabbler.co.uk. We'll be reviewing it soon. We’re planning to do a highly-acclaimed new novel for May’s book ... Read More...
Definition of Pendants Coroner: when someone corrects someone else’s grammar, punctuation, spelling or factual knowledge, and in the process makes some risible error or errors. It derives from a thread on Harry’s Place when a commenter came to correct some points of grammar, punctuation, etc. under the moniker (unintentional) of ... Read More...
