The Dabbler has teamed up with Wish.co.uk to offer our readers a chance to win a special wine experience in London... The perfect day out for wine enthusiasts, one winner and his or her guest will visit London’s premiere wine establishment located near Borough Market, the Tate Modern and Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre, for the Vinopolis ... Read More...
Month: February 2012
Henry combines the typical Dabbler's two main passions: reading and drinking... One simply cannot have too many books about booze. I’ll even read those books about supermarket wine with titles like Easyquaff and Fruity! that were all the rage a few years ago. In particular I like ones from secondhand bookshops ... Read More...
This week Toby Ferris's mission is to boldly go where a select group of men have gone before: to help patch up the world's oldest piece of literature, a crumbling, fragmentary poem on the fear of death... I am struck by the vain but pleasing thought that the Anatomy of Norbiton ... Read More...
A novel entitled The Third Reich was discovered among Roberto Bolaño's papers after his death in 2003, and has only recently been published in book form. Elberry tries to get to grips with it... Bolaño is a vexing writer. He is generally hailed as a great genius, and even in translation ... Read More...
To mark the 200th anniversary of Charles Dickens' birth, we're serialising The Pickwick Papers... Thanks to our friends at Naxos Audiobooks, we're exclusively serialising their abridged version of what is perhaps Dickens’ funniest work, The Pickwick Papers, read by Anton Lesser. Chapters 11 and 12 can be heard below. You can catch ... Read More...
The Dabbler ventures into the exciting world of travel blogging in the company of Anne Ward, the mastermind behind the remarkable Nothing to See Here blog and now the author of a Nothing to See Here book, subtitled A Guide to the Hidden Joys of Scotland. (Incidentally, it's published by Pocket Mountains where you ... Read More...
With the United Kingdom under threat from Mr Salmond and his bravehearts, in this week's music feature Brit searches for the essence of its four constituent members... The Scottish National Party has been mugged by power and, as Daniel Kalder so brilliantly explained, the northern Britons are faced with the frightening ... Read More...
To make up for the lack of time I’ve had to prepare a post this week, I thought you might like to see inside some of the rooms at London’s Corinthia Hotel. Sorry, I’m not inviting you there for a clandestine kiss and cuddle - but I do have some ... Read More...
Dabbler Book Club member Monix reviews William Boyd's latest blockbuster. We also have a couple of copies to give away - see below... Lysander Rief, a quite handsome, quite well-educated, quite successful young actor, engaged to be married to one of England’s most glamorous actresses, has cancelled all his plans, withdrawn ... Read More...
Last week Frank Key was placed in the unseemly position of having to shout his head off at the editors of The Dabbler for neglecting to devote Saturday to a celebration of Yoko Ono's 79th birthday. To placate Frank, we are using the space in his cupboard this week to publish, ... Read More...