Jonathon Green introduces his favourite collector of slang (and an ancestor of The Dabbler's very own Jon Hotten), John Camden Hotten... SLANG represents that evanescent, vulgar language, ever changing with fashion and taste,...spoken by persons in every grade of life, rich and poor, honest and dishonest...Slang is indulged in from a ... Read More...

My father-in-law is a photographer, and one of the great things about 'have camera, will travel' is that he occasionally gets to go on some fantastic trips. A while ago he was invited to visit the Eastern Orthodox St Catherine's monastery in the Sinai Desert of Egypt by a friend who's ... Read More...

Dabbler foodie expert Jassy Davis goes scrumping for an autumnul treat... I’ve been out in my local park, bothering the hedgerows again. The season compels me. Autumn arrives heavy with fruit, nuts and vegetables and the urge to get into my metaphorical combine and harvest it all is irresistible. I’m helped ... Read More...

James Hamilton celebrates the old English football stadia, remarkable but unappreciated national treasures, through the story of gem-in-the-rough Burnden Park. They were built in a 30 year goldrush, the old English football stadia, and when they were new, there'd been nothing like them in the world since Byzantium. Fifty years after ... Read More...

As Texas burns, Daniel Kalder continues to mull over the implications of living in a natural disaster area... The other night I was working in my backyard when I caught a whiff of smoke on the wind: a barbecue? I wondered. But there were no smoke trails coming from behind my neighbor’s ... Read More...

Scott Locklin continues his Compelling Machinery series. It's the turn of the truly epochal and somehow tremendously appealing steam engine. Before computers, before men learned to fly, before the European empires fell apart, there was the age of steam. The age of steam lives on only in rusted hulks and remnants of ... Read More...

Brit dons his heavy-duty waterproofs and grimly takes up his bucket and spade in a traditional British seaside resort... A few weeks ago I found myself clamped in the teeth of a North Sea gale, on a bitter July Tuesday, trying to make a sandcastle from the brown sludge of Skegness beach.   It was a corporate team-building thing. ... Read More...

Every one's a winner on The Dabbler today: now it's Dabbler Book Club member Emily Taylor, who's got two free tickets to Writing on Houses - Dwelling on Dwelling, an evening of discussion on 19th September at King's Place in London. It features Alan Hollinghurst (author of the Book Club's choice for August, ... Read More...

Every month we award a bottle of Glengoyne 10 year old single malt - the finest whisky available to humanity - to a commenter... One of the joys of blogging is how the experiences of readers are able to inform the written word. Most recently, it was a particular delight when ... Read More...

Summer is over and September is here again. Here's another chance to read Worm's exploration of how this month has provided an often melancholy inspiration to artists. By all these lovely tokens September days are here With summer’s best of weather And autumn’s best of cheer. September is an interesting and unsettling month, and a ... Read More...