Passio

Mahlerman offers a feast of great music for Easter Sunday... On this day last year seasoned Dabblers may remember that we travelled east, to the bleak wastes of Russia, and found Easter nourishment in the company of Sergei Rachmaninoff and his musical father Tchaikovsky. This year we discover inspiring music closer ... Read More...

The Diagram Prize

Time to get topical as I plunder Wikipedia for the in depth scoop on The Diagram Prize, which was awarded to the book above only last week ... The Bookseller/Diagram Prize for Oddest Title of the Year, commonly known as the Diagram Prize for short, is a humorous literary award that ... Read More...

The Miliband Resignation

Frank recalls, vividly, his feelings upon hearing about the shock resignation of David Miliband... All of us, I suspect, can remember vividly the moment we heard that David Miliband had resigned his parliamentary seat. In this age of the Information Superhighway, the news circled the globe with unprecedented speed. While bustling ... Read More...

Heroes of Slang 22: Moll Frith

The latest in Jonathon's irregular (and irregularly numbered) Heroes of Slang series is actually a heroine... I took Maths O Level in late 1962 and passed. It was my last encounter with the subject. Only geography from which I was removed having managed to claim the wooden spoon three terms in ... Read More...

Edward Bulwer-Lytton: Peerless Unreadability

Nige pays tribute to the exceptional unreadability of the originator of "It was a dark and stormy night"... Edward Bulwer-Lytton, born in 1803, was a hugely successful novelist in his day, now all but forgotten and unread, remembered only for incidentals. He coined the phrases 'the Great Unwashed' and 'the almighty dollar' ... Read More...

Designs for a Modern Life?

To la Poisonnerie de l’Avenue, where courtesy of a generous friend, we dined on a feast of melt-in-the-mouth asparagus - followed by a succession of beautifully presented seafood dishes, reminiscent of Elizabeth David five decades ago. My oeufs a la neige (which predictive type keeps trying to turn ‘beige’) au ... Read More...

The Wild Ginger Man

This exclusive extract from the Spring 2013 issue of Slightly Foxed quarterly is by Dabbler editor Andrew Nixon, and looks at the dark appeal and extraordinary publication history of J.P. Donleavy's cult novel The Ginger Man... ‘This’, said my father, handing me a battered paperback, ‘is the sort of book that ... Read More...

Non-Rotten Ethno Fusion

Ethno fusion: a good idea in principle but usually pretty horrible. Daniel Kalder drums up a fews exceptions... As a bored lad in 1990s small town Scotland my ear craved exotic sounds. I probably discovered “world” rhythms via Talking Heads LPs, before graduating to the harder stuff. And so I dabbled ... Read More...

Euromyths

In a week where the papers are full of columns warning that the EU is out to pilfer everyone's bank accounts, I thought it topical to look at the world of straight bananas and Sun Newspaper headlines. Turns out there's a word for such Brussels-based brouhaha... A euromyth is the word ... Read More...

A Recipe For Gruel

You will need the following ingredients: oats; water. The following equipment is essential: a big pot; a big spoon; the Holy Bible. On a blustery winter's day, with a chill in the very marrow of your poor, poor bones, take the big pot & carry it, trudging through snow, to the rusty ... Read More...