This week Mr Slang takes us back to 19th Century America and a remarkable 'Chronicle of the Turf, Agriculture, Field Sports, Literature, and the Stage’... ‘I’m a Salt River Roarer! I’m a ring-tailed squealer! I'm a reg'lar screamer from the ol’ Massassip’! WHOOP! I’m the very infant that refused his milk ... Read More...

Bizarre Flemish coincidences and worshipping at the Temple of Apple in this dispatch, as Rita visits New York... I first suspected something was amiss with my New York Subway app when it advised us to travel from Midtown Manhattan to the Lower East Side via Brooklyn, on the other side of ... Read More...

A couple of weeks ago an issue of Sunday Times Style Magazine appeared to be dedicated to the feminist cause. There was an article by Camilla Long on the relevance of feminism today, accompanied by comments from Caitlin Moran and a number of media-savvy younger women involved with female causes. ... Read More...

In every party there comes a critical point when the sober and the pissed have diverged so far that they can no longer communicate with each other. I found myself on the wrong side of the divide at about 10.45pm on Saturday night, staring at the bonfire and sipping a ... Read More...

Bach and Mozart loved the instrument, so why has the viola always languished in the shadows?... Yes, there they are right under the nose of the conductor in the front-middle of a modern symphony orchestra, perhaps four or five desks of two; and yes, that soft-edged, dark-hued baritonal sound does indeed ... Read More...

Last week I inveigled you into imagining a movie starring Nicolas Cage gunning a Dodge Charger across the California desert to take some peyote and look at some concrete dinosaurs. Well, this week I thought I might ask you to try imagining roughly the same film, except with Robin Asquith gunning ... Read More...

In a special guest post, Canadian commenter Peter muses on the English-speaking world's various attitudes to booze... The British and Americans have more in common than language to divide them.  The joys of intercontinental blogging and a long time bedtime addiction to police mysteries have led me to understand that a ... Read More...

Here's what Frank's been up to in New York... I was in New York last week, so I took the opportunity to pay homage to Elizabeth Smart by sitting down by Grand Central Station and weeping. This is easier said than done, for 42nd Street, on to which the great railway ... Read More...

Jonathon Green returns to his series on London and slang with a visit to the fishwives of Billingsgate... Billingsgate. As in fish. As in Belin’s Gate which may memorialize one Belin, who, according to Charles Dickens Jr’s Dictionary of the Thames (1881) and quoting Geoffrey of Monmouth, was a king and ... Read More...

Multi-talented author Henry Hitchings' new book Sorry! The English and their Manners has garnered glowing reviews. In an exclusive post for The Dabbler, Henry explains why Curb Your Enthusiasm is the ultimate comedy of manners... When I began writing a book about manners, I thought about sitcoms I could reference for ... Read More...