We all know about her politics, but which common British bird did Margaret Thatchet most resemble when in motion? Frank Key conducts a scientific experiment to decide this important question... In all the swathes of verbiage following the death of Margaret Thatcher earlier this week, one key question remained unanswered: when ... Read More...
Month: April 2013
Slang provides 135 synonyms for death, and 235 apiece for 'die' and 'dead'. Jonathon Green goes in search of the Grim Reaper... Ding-dong, the wicked witch is dead. So have the celebrants pronounced, but doesn’t singing that render one a Munchkin and surely the only useful time for a dictator to ... Read More...
Rita explains the tradition of the weather-predicting Groundhog - and how it became yet another pawn in the Culture Wars... Americans have endured the War on Christmas, the War on the Easter Bunny, and the War on North Korea – oh wait, that one hasn’t happened yet and it isn’t funny. ... Read More...
Following his post on the folk singer Shelagh McDonald, Jonathan Law continues his occasional series on artists who have vanished into thin air with a look at a strange and possibly brilliant poet... If you’ve ever come across the work of Rosemary Tonks, then I think I might hazard a guess ... Read More...
Baroness Thatcher was inarguably a towering figure of the 20th Century and her legacy will be debated fiercely elsewhere on the internet. But here on the Dabbler, we just want to pay tribute to her radioactive allure... I never thought I’d say this - let alone write it down somewhere public ... Read More...
Prepare to be re-oriented - we welcome back the Atlas of Norbiton, which today maps out benches and their historical ramifications. Years ago when I was teaching English in Rome I had an American colleague – William Smith III of Colombia, South Carolina – who one month, with still some days ... Read More...
Pink Floyd's enduringly popular Dark Side of the Moon turned 40 this year. But, as Daniel Kalder explains, there was plenty of great rock music around in 1973... This March Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon turned 40 years old to some ballyhoo in the press. Apparently Sir Tom Stoppard ... Read More...
Who was Spring-heeled Jack? Was he anything to do with Jack The Ripper? I wasn't sure, so I asked Wikipedia and this is what it told me: Spring-heeled Jack is a folklore character of victorian times who was known for his bizarre appearance and startling leaps and bounds. The first claimed ... Read More...
Jessica Warner, in Craze : Gin And Debauchery In An Age Of Reason (2003) provides what she claims is a complete list of victims of spontaneous human combustion in literature from 1798 to 1893. The narrator’s father in Wieland by Charles Brockden Brown (1798) William the Testy in Knickerbocker’s History Of New ... Read More...
Ebullient, unembarrassable and the model for Rat in The Wind in the Willows - Mr Slang introduces the remarkable lexicographer Frederick Furnivall... Fink, Frith, what next? asked John Halliwell. Two F-words, we must have another. So here he is: Frederick Furnivall (1825-1910), bearded, pink-tied, vegetarian, oarsman, controversialist, muscular Christian socialist, midwife ... Read More...
