This highly entertaining 1p review comes from guest Mike Petty... Unlike other Saturday-afternoon staples like The Dam Busters and Reach for the Sky, the film of Ice Cold in Alex is based on a novel. I simply can't remember if I've read it before, so comprehensively has it been elbowed out ... Read More...
Month: September 2011
I was going to devote this week's cupboard to singing the praises of the London Library, but then I read this – so you should go and read it too, and then come back here. [Intermission.] That seems to me the perfect introduction to the library – concise, informative, and suitably awestruck ... Read More...
Mr Slang explains why finds one particular word to be the most offensive in the English language... Occasionally, when I toss some new offering onto the great heap of the unsold that is publishing (for if every birth is a death postponed, so are mint and shiny first editions merely the ... Read More...
Nige examines a 19th Century poem that has experienced a sudden revival in popularity, having been cited as an inspiration by both Nelson Mandela and, um, Gordon Brown... My father's taste in poetry was that of an upright Edwardian. He had a personal anthology of poems of moral uplift and patriotic ... Read More...
Elberry considers what JRR Tolkien's masterpiece can teach us about an all-too human emotion. Tolkien’s vision of evil is subtle and extensive. He is not content with black riders and Balrogs and orcs, these dramatic but thoroughly inhuman enemies; there is also the all-too familiar and all-too human emotion of hatred, ... Read More...
The Dabbler's ex-pat American correspondent discovers a corner of the USA that is forever Elizabethan England... When I spotted the couple across the room in a crowded Washington D.C. cocktail party I had the weird sensation of stepping back in time. They were arranged in a pose typical of classic portrait ... Read More...
JL and Worm are still battling it out for the cream bun. For everyone who's given up, click continue for the solution, I'll let Adelephant answer her bonus question in the comments. 17981 ... Read More...
This week's devilishly fiendish Round Blogworld Quiz question (see the previous ones and their solutions here) has been set by expert solver Adelephant. As usual, find the link between these cryptic clues. A point for each item you get, and an imaginary cream bun of regal proportions if you get ... Read More...
Brit praises Thomas Alfredson's new adaptation of the Le Carre classic... A Saturday night visit to the ring-road multiplex is not, in the normal course of things, an activity of particular cultural sophistication. Grown-ups in JD sportsgear (i.e.oversized romper suits) toddle open-mouthed from the shouty, flashy blast of the foyer into ... Read More...
The Dabbler's wine correspondent Henry Jeffreys finds it's never too early to open a bottle of sherry... Sherry is the very opposite of a modern wine – it’s not fruity, it’s not made from a well-known grape variety and worst of all for the accountants who run most of the larger ... Read More...