Writer Jon Hotten has been on both sides of the review fence. Here he reveals the extraordinary disconnect between being a reviewer and a reviewee... My friend and estimable rock music writer (amongst other things) Paul Elliott has been asking everyone he interviews if they can remember their worst review. They ... Read More...
Month: December 2011
Nige explores a county where "history is written on the face of the land"... Tell someone you're going walking in Leicestershire and chances are you'll be greeted by a blank bewildered look, or the bald question 'Why?' In fact, Leicestershire has some of the best walking country in England - wide open ... Read More...
Toby Ash shares some musical sunshine from New Orleans... Even with my own not insignificant blagging skills, I‘m not going to begin to pretend to have any deep knowledge, and certainly no clever insights, into the world of New Orleans jazz. I would be exposed as a fraud in a second. ... Read More...
The annual Handel’s Messiah concert at St Paul’s Cathedral had a somewhat more edgy vibe this year. Tent City turned out to be a much shabbier type of encampment than I’d envisaged from the press. In the twenty minutes that I waited outside the cathedral, being blasted by the icy ... Read More...
We take a look at the predictions of cartoonist Osbert Lancaster (1908-1986), who thought that any attempt to rebuild Shakepeare's Globe Theatre would be laughed out of town... With his tweedy outfits and otter-like head, cartoonist Osbert Lancaster was well known to households of the middle twentieth century. Magnificently named, Osbert rose to ... Read More...
Having vowed on Tuesday to destroy everything he has written to date and start all over again with Steve Bruce as his literary mentor, Frank begins in earnest with an exciting short story... His office was comfortable. There was a computer on the desk. It was a desktop PC running the ... Read More...
Mr Slang looks at the nominations for 'Word of the Year' and wonders why they bother... What are words worth? Tom Tom Club ‘Wordyrappinghood’ (1981) Let us assume, why not, that it’s me. Let us assume, nothing new here, that I’m wrong. Let us assume, hardly a first in self-denial, that everyone else ... Read More...
Recently Dabbler editor Brit made the controversial claim that the ‘jokes’ section of Private Eye – written for five decades by a small exclusive gang hidden away in the editor’s office – is not funny. To investigate, Noseybonk, who is able to travel back and forth in time nae bother, zips forward ... Read More...
We've been marking the launch of occasional Dabbler Bryan Appleyard's new book The Brain is Wider than the Sky with a mini-Appleyardfest (read Brit's review here and an exclusive Q&A with the author here). To conclude it, here's Elberry on the human imagination... Signed copy competition winners - congratulations to Dabbler ... Read More...
Gaw finds Edwin Muir's memories of childhood particularly resonant... I'm reading Edwin Muir's autobiography, recommended here by masterly commenter Jonathan Law. As JL remarks, the account of his childhood is terrific. He seems remarkably able to inhabit a child's perspective - I've only witnessed it being done as well in Joyce's Portrait of the ... Read More...