Nige discovers a strange book and ponders the fleeting nature of literary reputation... Browsing in a local charity shop one day, I came across a curious item - a Charles Kingsley Year Book, published by his widow in the 1890s. A handsomely produced volume, it has for each day of the ... Read More...
Month: May 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...
One from the Dabbler archives this Bank Holiday Monday - Ian Vince's account of one of the oddest twitchers you'd ever be likely to meet.... It had been a long walk through the Shropshire hills in search of fossils and, with a good morning’s work completed and a bag full of ... Read More...
Something a bit different this week, as Brit examines the genealogy of a deathless folk song… The above bit of Japanese bootleggery is, as far as I can gather, Bob Dylan’s first ever television appearance, on a curious show called ‘Folk Songs and More Folk Songs’ broadcast in the US in ... Read More...
Susan's off sunning herself in exotic climes, so continuing the boozy theme of recent days, here's a Retroprogressive classic from the archives... A few years ago I read an article about a ‘wine bible’ costing a whopping £640,000. The sixty four million dollar question is how the publishers, Kraken Opus, arrived ... Read More...
In which Henry uncovers a hoard of very old wine, and does some impromptu blending... About ten years ago a friend of mine inherited a country pile from a misanthropic great uncle. The place was a bit neglected so he planned to sell off some of the accumulated loot in order ... Read More...
This week, a trip down memory lane, sweeties and a delightful vision of hell... As a child, I was entranced by toffee apple wrappers. A toffee apple itself was a rare treat, bought for me perhaps on occasional visits to a fairground or church bazaar. Much as I enjoyed the toffee, ... Read More...
Wallowing once again in humanity's darkest places (in this case France, and a Robert Crumb exhibition), Mr Slang suffers a bout of troubled introspection... Forgive me: I’m pondering work again. I went to an exhibition at Paris’ Musée de l’Art Moderne last week. It was dedicated to the work of Robert Crumb, ... Read More...
Luke Honey writes about food, drink and the finer things in life over at his blog The Greasy Spoon. Today he gets stuck into a literary cocktail created in honour of a man who was fond of a tipple himself... As a long time fan of Graham Greene, I was amused ... Read More...
Announcing the winners of this month’s Dabbler Book Club choice… Sightlines by Kathleen Jamie is our latest Dabbler Book Club choice, announced here. We began our week with a ship's encounter with an iceberg, as does Jamie's book and here's a taster: The next iceberg offers to the ship a ramp as smooth and ... Read More...
