Perhaps our American Dabblers might know about Rumspringa - it sounds like the sort of thing we should be offering to British teens in the hope that they could get it all out of their system in one go... Rumspringa is a term for an adolescent right of passage observed in ... Read More...
Month: March 2014
In this week's cupboard, upper-class men of the people... It was often said of the late Tony Benn that he had a wholly romantic view of the working class. It is a trait he shared, of course, with other high-born lefties. There is a fatal combination of complete unfamiliarity with ordinary ... Read More...
Jon Hotten on memory, dreams and cricket pitches... It's hard to write about a feeling as elusive as this one, yet it's that elusiveness that makes it both rare and worthwhile. It happened the other day, for the first time in a couple of years. I was driving through a town ... Read More...
Never buy anything from Amazon unless Dr M von Vogelhausen has reviewed it first... Fisher Space World Famous Bullet Pen In Black Titanium Nitride Lacquer Finish ***** out of this world! If, like me, you often need to write when upside down, or on grease, then you may have been mildly frustrated by ... Read More...
Warning: this recipe contains Father Brown spoilers... One of the best things I watched this year (and it will remain one of the best things I watch all year) was The Daughters of Jerusalem, one of the Father Brown mysteries brought to life in non-specific period glory by the BBC. I’m ... Read More...
But they will not go to bed. Long after lights out the pitter-patters and thump-thumps of strange games can be heard in their bedroom. Conspiratorial murmurings. Earnest discussions about meerkats. Then the whine of the gate and the pit-pats along the landing to the top of the stairs where they ... Read More...
Mahlerman stands well back and attempts to grasp the full scale of J S Bach's achievements... There is something mythical about Johann Sebastian Bach - for how else can we account for his superhuman mastery of form and substance? Beethoven alone bears comparison, but we are always aware of the struggle ... Read More...
A spooky two-faced tale comes to us today, as the Wikiworm continues to burrow deeper into the weirder side of Wikipedia... Edward Mordake was the name given to an apocryphal 19th century heir to an unspecified English peerage who was said to have suffered from a form of Diprosopus. According to ... Read More...
This week, an eerie tale of astrology and tortoises... It came as something of a shock when I learned that my fate was written in the stars. I had no idea that every last particular of my life, from cradle to grave, was foretold in the barely visible movements, thousands and ... Read More...
Nige rediscovers a pioneering work of English natural history... The world was made to be inhabited by beasts, but studied and contemplated by man: 'tis the debt of our reason we owe unto God, and the homage we pay for not being beasts. Without this, the world is still as though ... Read More...
