Time for a quiz! Can you solve the riddle of 'Lark Rise and Candleford Fair'? It's another Brit the Elder special... but this time, he assures us, it's significantly less fiendish than the last few, so everyone should have a bash at it... Viewers of the television series Lark Rise to Candleford ... Read More...
Month: March 2012
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. The latest episodes can be heard below. You can catch up ... Read More...
In which Luke Honey manages to blag some eye-watering coffee - eye-watering, that is, both in its costliness and its method of production... One of the amusing little perks of the food blogger's existence are the numerous unsolicited emails you get from pushy PR companies desperate to flog you their wares. ... Read More...
Can serious music be funny? This week Mahlerman brings us four pieces guaranteed to raise a smile... Serious music, and humour; it has never really worked has it? And although Papa Haydn may have raised a laugh in 18th Century Europe with his 'Surprise' Symphony, and Mozart with his 'Musical Joke' ... Read More...
Brad Pitt’s Legends of the Fall look was a big turn off, for even his most loyal fans. A decade or two later, and there’s now a website dedicated to the growing of beards. And another, with 10 reasons why every man (who can) should grow a giant beard. Beards have ... Read More...
Elberry reads "a well-informed, intelligent, and judicious book" but instinctively disagrees with its author... My stepfather once said: "I hate cities. I don't much like towns, either." He's lived most of his life in a village in West Yorkshire, and worked as a bus driver for a good twenty years. He ... Read More...
The voice of James Mason has, according to Frank Key, an even finer timbre than that of Richard Burton. As such, it makes the perfect basis for a challenging comprehension exercise... Study the four-second film clip above very very carefully. You may, like me, wish to view it umpteen times. Then, ... Read More...
Jonathon Green continues his series looking at how English slang has treated those funny foreigners. This week, 'frogs' - but it's not the French... Let us consider the frog. Not as an amphibian but in terms of nationality. This is not, however, the traditional frog, whose consumption by the eponymously nicknamed ... Read More...
Nige looks at the strange legacy of Lionel Johnson's poem 'Dark Angel'... Born on this day in 1867 was Lionel Pigot Johnson, archetypal minor poet of the English Decadence (along with Ernest Dowson, who at least contributed two film titles, 'Days of Wine and Roses' and 'Gone with the Wind', to posterity). Tormented ... Read More...
Are you a memeber of the Dabbler Book Club yet? If not, you're missing out on the chance to get your hands on a free copy of some of the best new books on release. This month we're about to get stuck in to Hope: A Tragedy by Shalom Auslander, ... Read More...
