Dabbler Correspondent Toby Ash was left bemused whilst shopping on a flight from Boston to Atlanta. On an internal flight during a recent short break in the United States, I pulled out my notebook and pen to scribble down some thoughts on the key differences between Americans and Brits.  But as ... Read More...

Since acquiring two little boys and their accompanying paraphernalia we've tended to use the shooting brake (ok, our VW) to travel to our holiday destination in the South of France. As a consequence - and also because of the sometimes frequent stops required by said little boys, one of whom ... Read More...

Welcome to The Dabbler Book Club! This is your chance to get hold of free books, hand-picked by The Dabbler from the best new releases. It's free to join, is available inside and outside the UK, and every month you'll get the chance to: receive a free copy of the latest book read exclusive posts by authors ... Read More...

In an occasional series Daniel Kalder examines the literary endeavours of the world's dictators. This week we learn of the dictator of a new and rather obscure nation who took a hands-on approach to Orwell's dictum that he who controls the past, controls the future. The collapse of the USSR brought ... Read More...

It's the first Tuesday of the month, which means - of course - it's time to review this month's Dabbler Book Club selection, Simon Winder's Germania. First, Dabbler regulars, Brit and Gaw, review their Teutonic trip. We then publish a few comments from an interesting California-British perspective by Dabbler Book Club ... Read More...

For a lazy Bank Holiday Monday afternoon, here, quite simply, are some songs that make me laugh. It was another blogger (I think Peter Burnet?) who introduced the brilliant Why Can’t a Woman be More Like a Man? to my consciousness. Alan Jay Lerner – who wrote the libretto for My ... Read More...

This month's Glengoyne Comment of the Month winner almost chose itself. However, it's hardly standard issue: it paints the sort of vivid, intriguing and even bizarre tableau you don't really expect to find in a blog comment. You may not be surprised to learn it came from the seemingly inexhaustible source of the vivid, intriguing and ... Read More...

Concluding The Dabbler's Big Royal Wedding Jamboree, Mahlerman brings us a Wills-n-Kate Lazy Sunday special - with the wedding music they should have played... In the tsunami of incontinence that followed the death of Diana, it was the arch marketeer Tony Blair who imagined he had caught the frangible mood of ... Read More...