This week Mahlerman leads us into the spooky world of Bela Bartok... A glance at the photograph of the Hungarian composer Bela Bartok gives a clue perhaps to the tensions, at times almost unbearable, that we find in much of his music. Reading his touching letters, as I have been, it ... Read More...

Porcine heroics are the order of the day for this installment of the Wikiworm, or possibly treachery, depending on which side you're on.. Tirpitz was a pig who switched sides in WW1, after he was captured from the German Navy following a naval skirmish. He subsequently became the mascot of the ... Read More...

Frank deciphers a message from inside the "Westminster bubble"... Dear "Control" I am writing to give you an update on my mission. I read, and then destroyed, your instruction to find out what was going on in British politics. Not long afterwards, I jumped from the spy plane you kindly provided and ... Read More...

Gantville cowboys, Butterboys and Sandy McNabs - Jonathon takes a ride through the world of taxi jargon (but doesn't, of course, go sarf of the river)... I am in a cab. The cabbie asks what lies in store. I explain that he is taking me home, which in my case is ... Read More...

Nige marvels at the 'practically perfect' short stories of Canadian author Alice Munro... It took me a long time to finally get round to reading Alice Munro - perhaps I was put off by the sheer volume of praise for her 'practically perfect' work, or by the fact that she won ... Read More...

Who says paths are for walking? Toby Ash has taken to stopping and looking. These words by Irish poet Patrick Kavanagh have been playing on my mind: To know fully even one field or one land is a lifetime’s experience. In the world of poetic experience it is depth that counts, not ... Read More...

Today we recall a Christian who threw himself to the lions. It is a very terrible thing to be “framed up” and cruelly punished when one is entirely innocent. ... I always call mine a clerical Dreyfus case. Still, I feel sure things will eventually right themselves, for “though the Mills ... Read More...

From the Dabbler archives, some rather odd pianists... The evidence would suggest that piano virtuosity and wild eccentricity go hand-in-hand. Here are three of the most troubled Greats (and this is not even to mention David Helfgott, made famous by the movie Shine, or Grigory Sokolov, who takes each piano apart ... Read More...

This week's wikipedia wierdness is indeed rather trivial, and made even more unusual by the voluminous amount of data devoted to serious discussion of something so meaningless. There are many thousands of words written on this nonsense so I have attempted to condense the key points for you here... Toilet paper ... Read More...

We know how important it is to eat three square meals a day – but what should those meals be? I have been doing some important research on this matter, and have devised what we might call the ostrich – prince – magician diet. Breakfast, first, where we follow the example ... Read More...