On a stage at the Festival of Nature – one of Bristol’s many, many spurious summer festivals – a man and a woman wearing flat caps with fox ears were performing a song about a rabbit going hop, hop, hop. My girls were hopping away on the Floating Harbour’s cobbled ground. ... Read More...
Month: June 2014
In today's poetry feature, Brit gives us some decidedly unsettling children's verse... There are many horrific poems, nursery rhymes and stories aimed at children, but for true terror we need look no further than the words and illustrations of Heinrich Hoffman, and his famous 1845 collection of 'Merry Tales and Funny ... Read More...
Another strange wikipedia article for this saturday's Wikiworm, and disappointingly nothing to do with George Melly... Mellified man, or human mummy confection, was a legendary medicinal substance created by steeping a human cadaver in honey. The concoction is mentioned only in Chinese sources, most significantly the Bencao Gangmu of the 16th-century Chinese pharmacologist Li Shizhen. Relying on a second-hand ... Read More...
The ever-industrious Mr Key has lately embarked upon a complete retelling of The Bible (including the Apocrypha) in the Hooting Yard style. Here is an exclusive extract... “How now, Holofernes,” said Judith. Holofernes put down his sack of grubbings on the floor and leaned to kiss the back of Judith’s hand. “Your moustache ... Read More...
'His party trick was to jump backwards onto a mantelpiece from a standing position'. Jon Hotten salutes the incomparable sporting Renaissance man, CB Fry... John Arlott called him 'the most variously gifted Englishman of any age,' and Arlott, conjuring his musty magic from an old typewriter set next a glass of ... Read More...
British ex-pat Rita faces up to just how American she has become... I celebrated my birthday this month and realized that I have now lived in the U.S. for exactly two thirds of my life. My early years in England seem, well, a lifetime away. My England was the England of ... Read More...
Today is midsummer, and Professor Nick Groom turns his attention to the woods. Trees are a special part of our national identity, and they need us as much as we need them... Woods occupy a special place in the imaginative topography of England. The greenwood is the haunt and habitat of ... Read More...
Following on from his hugely entertaining post about life as a bookseller, Steerforth pays tribute to the now-extinct breed of Full English-eating, Austin Montego-driving publishers' sales reps... In my last Dabbler post I wrote about my first year in bookselling and casually mentioned that every publisher's sales rep' used to be ... Read More...
This Sunday Mahlerman revives four masterful symphonies that have 'somehow slipped through the net of recognition and lie, unknown and unloved, on the coroner's slab'... If, unlike Igor Stravinsky, you accept that symphonic music is capable of 'saying something', you would probably agree that the high point of symphonic music was ... Read More...
Imaginary minerals are the topic of today's bizarre Wikipedia article, brought to you by the Wikiworm, ceaseless miner of useless knowledge... Unobtainium is a word used in engineering, fiction, and thought experiments, to describe any fictional, extremely rare, costly, or impossible material, or (less commonly) device needed to fulfill a given design for a ... Read More...