As a tribute to Pete Seeger, who passed away this week, here's Frank's unforgettable tale, I Had a Hammer... I had a hammer. I hammered in the morning. I hammered in the evening all over this land. I hammered out danger. I hammered out a warning. I hammered out love between ... Read More...
Month: January 2014
Big books for small talk... There’s a lot of talk in this world. Indeed, thanks to the technological gizmos on which we now spend so much of our time, we are surrounded by talk. The jibber jabber is constant, whether we get it directly from the mouths of the people around ... Read More...
A saucy comic book causes Rita to reflect on American attitudes to sex education... The little girls sat in a corner giggling hysterically over a comic book. Not an unusual sight, until I saw the comic book in question. This happened at a large family gathering in Belgium some years ago ... Read More...
Henry discovers a wine so unusually bad that he actually recommends you try it... Wine writers very rarely write about horrible wines. Their columns are full of exciting recommendations for readers to buy. There are two reasons for this. Firstly wine writers feel it is important to support wine as an ... Read More...
In his late fifties the great novelist and lecturer John Cowper Powys moved with his companion to a rural cottage in New England. As Jonathan Law reveals in this remarkable essay, the remote setting enabled Powys to give full vent to his bewildering range of manias and eccentricities... In the spring ... Read More...
In today's poetry feature, Stephen selects three variations on Horace's famous advice about how to live... Perhaps the best-known piece of advice on How to Live was given by Horace: carpe diem, quam minimum credula postero. In The Oxford Dictionary of Latin Words and Phrases (1998) the phrase is translated as ... Read More...
Have you ever thought about the immortality of the crab? You have now. Thinking about the immortality of the crab (Spanish: "Pensar en la inmortalidad del cangrejo") is a Spanish idiom about daydreaming. The phrase is usually a humorous way of saying that one was not sitting idly, but engaged constructively ... Read More...
In another exclusive extract from his new Dabbler Editions ebook, By Aerostat to Hooting Yard, Frank Key introduces us to the work of an unfairly neglected playwright... Prudence Foxglove was an unsung Victorian genius. Here is the opening scene from her play May The Light Of Our Saviour Beam Down Upon ... Read More...
Sign up to The Dabbler Book club today and you could be in with a chance of winning one of 5 pristine hardback copies of the popular new historical biography that seeks the true story behind the Tudor's most notorious queen... Religious revolutionary, power-hungry seductress, innocent victim, traitor - why are there ... Read More...
Christmas may be long over, but we've got a humdinger of a turkey for you - in the shape of a strange film about Charles Dickens. Luke Honey investigates... In the advent of my late youth, I’ve developed an interest in the life and works of Charles Dickens. I’ve devoured the ... Read More...