Gerard Hoffnung: A comedian ahead of his time

Nige pays tribute to a nearly-forgotten comic whose work seems remarkably contemporary... Under Mahlerman's Sunday post on Unserious Music, Worm mentions the once very famous and popular Gerard Hoffnung. That name took me right back to my boyhood. One of my uncles had a recording of Hoffnung's legendary stand-up (and sway ... Read More...

Beards go pop

We appear to be growing a weekly beard feature. Today Daniel Kalder combs through some notable beards from the world of popular music. Last week Susan offered us a fine post on Biblical beards. Among the images selected to illustrate the text was a photo of Billy Gibbons, lead guitarist for ... Read More...

Wren the Goth

Kicking off a new series , we welcome the return of Philip Wilkinson - author, architectural historian and denizen of the wonderful English Buildings Blog - to take us on a journey round some buildings with rather unlikely creators... Do architects dabble? Most architects would probably scorn such an idea. Nowadays ... Read More...

Mr Bayes, The Clergyman

A cautionary tale of the perils of literary success, from Andrew Marvell's The Rehearsal Transpros'd (1672): Nothing now would serve him but he must be a madman in print, and write a book of Ecclesiastical Policy. There he distributes all the Territories of Conscience into the Princes Province, and makes the ... Read More...

The Slang Guide to London: The Gaff

A ribald, rollicking historical treat for you this week, as Mr Slang brings to vivid life the world of the 'penny gaff' theatres of London... It is impossible to contemplate the ignorance and immorality of so numerous a class as that of the costermongers, without wishing to discover the cause of ... Read More...

Hope: A Tragedy – Winners!

Announcing the winners of this month’s Dabbler Book Club choice… Hope: A Tragedy by Shalom Auslander is a bizarre and controversial novel, which we announced as our latest Dabbler Book Club choice here. For some ten lucky winners of a copy, chosen at random from our book club members, Hope turned into Triumph: Graham ... Read More...

The Literary Composites

Brian Joseph Davis uses police identikit software to create sketches of famous literary characters. It's creepy... Do you recognise the man pictured above? You won't have seen him before, other than in your mind's eye, or possibly your nightmares. According to artist and blogger Brian Joseph Davis, this is what Humbert ... Read More...

The Norbiton Philharmonic

Toby Ferris rummages through the orchestra's changing cast of instruments and finds some half-forgotten but powerful beliefs. The modern symphony orchestra is a ritual instrument of considerable, sometimes alarming incantatory power. In Roumeli (1966) Patrick Leigh Fermor describes the two kinds of flute in use among the Sarakatsani, a dwindling group of ... Read More...