ZMKC is captivated by a romantic comedy which is also a 'remorseless satire of the eighties and nineties'... The action of One Day (available for 1p on Amazon) takes place over twenty years and follows the lives of two characters - Emma and Dexter. These two spend the night together at ... Read More...
Month: September 2013
It has been a summer of festivals in Bristol. Well, it’s always a summer of festivals in Bristol, but this year it didn’t rain on them. The Harbour Festival, the Balloon Fiesta, the Kite Festival, Brisfest, Redfest, VegFest, Grillstock aka MeatFest, yes it’s a Festfest alright. My daughters have enjoyed ... Read More...
Every other Sunday we'll be bringing you great poetry in a relaunched Dabbler Verse feature (alternating with Mahlerman's Lazy Sunday music posts). For this first post we welcome the wonderful blogger Stephen Pentz to The Dabbler... Sometimes the fact that a certain person is simply there in the world -- as a ... Read More...
Pictured above is an old london character - The Greenwich Time Lady, star of another strange story discovered on my tour around the weirder articles to be found on wikipedia... Ruth Belville (5 March 1854 – 7 December 1943), also known as the Greenwich Time Lady, was a businesswoman from London. She, ... Read More...
Frank gives Dabblers an exclusive taster of his new biographical reference book... It occurred to me that it would be a good idea to write a modern, updated version of John Aubrey's Brief Lives. But it further occurred to me that some books are unimproveable, and that in trying to follow ... Read More...
Since his very first column for The Dabbler in January 2011, Jonathon Green has barely missed a Thursday post. But now, after some 138 posts and umpteen thousand words, we regret to say that Mr Slang has decided to relinquish his weekly duties. Everyone at The Dabbler heartily thanks him for ... Read More...
Few can claim to have babysat for a great poet, but Rita can. Here is her personal memory of Seamus Heaney, who died last week... The voice on the phone was unmistakably Irish. Was I free to babysit on Saturday evening? I was. It was 1971 in Berkeley and the Irishman ... Read More...
A true master is enjoying a revival of interest - today we take a particular look at Vasily Grossman's An Armenian Sketchbook. In 1998 I stumbled upon a Russian novel called Life and Fate. I was surprised because I had never heard of it or its author Vasily Grossman, yet by ... Read More...
A real treat for us today as Luke Honey explores the little known link between super-macho action hero Harry Palmer and fancy gourmet cookery ... Colonel Ross: Champignons? You’re paying ten pence more for a fancy French label. If you want button mushrooms they’re better value on the next shelf. Harry ... Read More...
The Dies Irae is one of the most-used themes in western music. Mahlerman selects some fine examples... Scholars are split, but to put the four note descending motive (and the bars that follow) into some sort of context, I will give the palm to the 13th Century Franciscan Thomas of Celano for conjuring-up ... Read More...
