Despite all the unseasonal sunshine we've been enjoying, we'll surely soon be in the grip of winter. How about reminding yourself of warm and sunny days with a glass of fresh fruitiness? The Daiquiri. One of the most enduring cocktails ever created. Perhaps the secret to its longevity lies in its ... Read More...

Steve Bruce, the former Manchester United player, was sacked as manager of Sunderland last week. Fortunately, Bruce has an alternative career to fall back on. Few people realise that a decade ago Bruce self-published two short football-based thrillers - sort of soccer-based versions of Dick Francis - entitled Striker! and Sweeper! (A proposed third instalment, Defender! ... Read More...

Nige gives us Auden's poetic tribute to two great literary naturalists... Two books I had on the go a little while ago were Richard Mabey's biography of Gilbert White  and a selection from Thoreau's Journals. This latter is the Dover Thrift edition, which somehow winnows the 14 mighty volumes of published ... Read More...

Gaw explores how, even though traditional newspapers are in decline, newsprint is finding new and quite lovely uses. For nearly two years now I've been working at a start-up called Newspaper Club. We help people make their own newspapers. It's been a fascinating experience not least because of what people, all ... Read More...

Steel yourself for some uneasy listening this week, as Mahlerman guides us through Futurism and 'Machine Music'... Late in 1917, with the slaughter of Czar Nicholas and his family a few months away, and the Bolshevik Revolution in full swing, Sergei Prokofiev introduced his Haydnesque Classical Symphony to the world. This ... Read More...

Travellers in need of a good night’s sleep are hardly likely to want to stay at the nearest station hotel. And, if you’re a regular commuter, you certainly won’t relish the thought of a room that looks out onto a station concourse… These are some of the reasons why I ... Read More...

Every month we award a bottle of Glengoyne 10 year old single malt - the finest whisky available to humanity - to a commenter who tickles our fancy... Of course, amazing things happen in The Dabbler's Comments section every day. But last month saw it providing for the first time a valuable primary ... Read More...

This week, Frank makes a confession... In one of her recent Dispatches From The Former New World, Rita Byrne Tull confessed to having had a teenage crush on Harold Wilson. Readers – and no doubt Rita herself – will have chuckled ruefully at such youthful folly, but for me there was ... Read More...

Mr Slang examines the lexicography of 'specialist' book titles, and uncovers a  "grim commentary on the tropes of male excitement..." This is it, I promise. The last one. But pondering the verbose titles of the 19th century pornography, I could but compare them with modernity, or nearly so: the mass-produced paperback equivalents ... Read More...

Gwyn Headley, the foremost authority on English follies and co-author of the magnificent new ebook series Follies of England, takes us into a strange subterranean world... Imagine you are standing beside a tall wall. It encloses a kitchen garden, eight acres of kitchen garden, the sort of self -sufficiency that would ... Read More...