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...
Month: April 2012
In this centenary month of the sinking of the Titanic we welcome Mark Richardson, literary professor and blogger, on a poem that dips into deep and strange waters to quite astonishing effect. Thomas Hardy first published The Convergence of the Twain in the program printed for a "Dramatic and Operatic Matineé in Aid ... Read More...
Mahlerman continues his fortnightly guide to serious music by looking at three great second symphonies... In the summer of 1802 Ludwig van Beethoven, as was his pleasure, left Vienna for the peace of the countryside, settling in the small hamlet of Heiligenstadt a few miles away. Just 32 years old, with ... Read More...
Following yesterday’s drinks at the Mall Tavern, some Dabblers may be experiencing side effects such as double vision, dizziness, nausea, lightheadedness, loss of balance, bladder urgency and abnormal sweating. You will be pleased to hear that RetroProgressive has found a cure for these uncomfortable ailments, thanks to a February 1936 copy ... Read More...
Elberry finds historian Anna Reid successfully managing a difficult balancing act in her new book about the seige of Leningrad, which killed four times as many people as Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined... "When one man dies it is a tragedy, when thousands die it's statistics" (Stalin to Churchill at Teheran) And the opening ... Read More...
Last week in his cupboard, Frank Key gave us a modern fable, so this week we asked him to turn his attention to Aesop, the great fabulist of antiquity. Unfortunately, we delegated the task of telephoning Frank to a Dabbler minion with a very thick Black Country accent, and a ... Read More...
This week Mr Slang salutes the man who gave us such terms as Tom, Dick and Harry, tub-thumper and, ahem, buttered bun... ‘I do not love thee Dr Fell The reason why I cannot tell; But this I know and know full well, I do not love thee, Dr Fell.’ The verse we know. The author, probably ... Read More...
Guest art reviewer Sophie Whenham admires a revival of traditional drawing techniques amongst some young British artists... A recent article by Jonathan Jones entitled Get up and demand better British art prompted me to think about the contemporary art scene: for many people, so much of it is inaccessible, incomprehensible and unoriginal. And the hysteria surrounding some exhibitions ... Read More...
In this series Philip Wilkinson – author, architectural historian and denizen of the wonderful English Buildings Blog – takes us on a journey round some buildings with rather unlikely creators… Charles Francis Annesley Voysey was one of the great domestic architects of the Arts and Crafts movement, famous for his low-slung, ... Read More...
In the second of two exclusive online extracts from the indispensable guide to the hidden joys of Scotland, Nothing to See Here, we look at a striking example of industrial art deco, which, thankfully, is looking as good as it's ever done. You can buy Anne's book here (it's published ... Read More...