From the August 2010 archives, Jon Hotten appreciates a brilliant but almost forgotten gonzo writer... No-one’s ever written a perfect book have they? Jonathan Rendall hasn’t, but he’s written a couple of very good ones, and in improbable circumstances too. His first, a boxing memoir called This Bloody Mary Is The ... Read More...

This week someone has shoved a bran tub into my cupboard. Let us see what we find in it. First, a quotation from Stanley Baldwin to cheer you up: My inside is a mess of cold rumbling fluidity. My brain is costive. Faith is dying. Hope is dead. Next, some notes on ... Read More...

Fired by Jonathan Law’s recent reference to the man, Jonathon Green brings us another Hero of Slang. John Taylor: The Water Poet.  Taylor was born in Gloucester in 1578; his father may have been a barber-surgeon. He was educated in the town but abandoned school when he found Latin grammar too challenging. In the ... Read More...

From the archives, Gaw examines a countryside classic... I've been reading Oliver Rackham's The History of the Countryside, a book full of ideas, observations and interesting facts. It's a great myth-buster and is permeated by a sceptical curiosity that's never shy of actually visiting a patch of land if that's what's ... Read More...

Dabbler Book Club members! We have two free tickets to give away to you for Writing on Houses - Dwelling on Dwelling, an evening of discussion on 19th September at King's Place in London about the relationship between houses and literature involving Alan Hollinghurst (author of the Book Club's choice for ... Read More...

The Rings Of Saturn (available for 1p here) is a strange book, not in any conventional sense a novel. It has affinities with the kind of thing the great psychogeographer Iain Sinclair writes - if less convivial and fantastical than Sinclair. Dispensing with what he called the 'grinding noises' of the ... Read More...

Continuing our Roy Orbison double bill, here are some clips from the concert film A Black and White Night. Broadcast in January 1988 (Orbison died in December the same year), in A Black and White Night the Big O performed with a remarkable line-up of guest stars, including Bruce Springsteen, Elvis ... Read More...

Had he lived, Roy Orbison would have been 75 this year. Here, Daniel Kalder writes about the Big O's transcendental power... For me, like most people, memory is intricately intertwined with music. Another Brick in the Wall pt 2 was a hit the year I started school, and so the song always ... Read More...

This Repeat about Michael Wharton's A Dubious Codicil, from August 2010, seems an appropriate companion piece to James Hamilton's discourse on nostalgia, since its concluding sentence is perhaps the purest expression of misguided British nostalgia I've ever written... A Dubious Codicil is the second part of Michael ‘Peter Simple’ Wharton’s autobiography. You can buy it ... Read More...

James Hamilton examines the phenomenon of nostalgia... I've never had it: the lightly held, easily tossed-off belief that the past was "simpler" or "more innocent." And little wonder. I spent most of my childhood obscurely but thoroughly scared; even now, many years later, I find myself disassociating under stress or seeking ... Read More...