Today we start a new occasional series on shopping, shops and shopkeeping. I have unreasonably sentimental feelings about ironmongery. Or at least I thought they were unreasonable. As kids in South Wales my brother and I used to collect small, pearl-handled penknives, the sort you might use to scrape out a pipe ... Read More...
Month: April 2013
The most memorable and piercing end of term report I received at school consisted of this single sentence: “Andrew’s attitude is a not entirely displeasing mixture of cooperation and sedition.” This headstone-worthy epigram was penned by my A-level history teacher, a Mr Berwick Coates, and blow me if I didn’t ... Read More...
As we approach the anniversary of the death of Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Mahlerman pays tribute to the great lyric baritone, who provided 'the soundtrack to my life'... In so many ways the aristocratic lyric baritone Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, who died in Berg, Bavaria almost a year ago, was the quintessential Berliner, a genuine ... Read More...
I think every English teacher I ever had must have mentioned this book at some point, but I had never got round to finding out anything more about it, until now... Gadsby: A Story of Over 50,000 Words Without Using the Letter "E" is a novel written in 1939 by Ernest ... Read More...
It is a little known fact that the composer Peter Warlock once shared a house with a Maori who conceived an opera based on Tristam Shandy and subsisted chiefly on stout... I have been reading Peter Warlock : The Life Of Philip Heseltine by Barry Smith. Dabblers will be familiar with ... Read More...
Jonathon's latest Hero of Slang is a highly influential poet who wrote 'more frankly about sex than anyone in English before the 20th century'. Be warned, by clicking Continue on this post you'll be unleashing a fair torrent of 17th Century filth... ‘Rouse stately Tarse And lett thy 31165 ... Read More...
ZMKC enjoys a modern classic, available for a penny on Amazon.... I think I may be the last person in the world not to have read Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit. Indeed, it is possible that the only reason the book is actually available for 1p on Amazon is that the market for it ... Read More...
We've done dirigibles, jets, battle ships and steam engines. Today, Scott Locklin introduces us to a crazy machine they called SAGE. While cold war jets are an old interest of mine, almost everything built to fight the cold war fascinates me. All ages are characterized by madness; only a few have that madness captured in ... Read More...
The unexpected pleasures of the technical glitch. 2013 is Richard Wagner’s bicentenary, and I notice there will be a concert performances of several of his operas at the Proms in July, including a complete Ring cycle. I’ve seen concert performances of Wagner before and they are exhilarating, effective, moving, what you will; ... Read More...
Part 2 of Brit's look at the influences on Van Morrison features the Godfather of Soul, the King of Rock 'n Soul and some serious sweating... Few artists, as I noted a few months ago, have been more influential than Van Morrison, and few have been as explicit about their own ... Read More...