Douglas address the fundamentals... Twenty years ago I was somehow able to think about sex all day long. I could think about sex even when I wasn’t thinking about it. Temporarily distracted by bus schedules, term papers, potential muggers, or the likelihood of being able to pay my rent, sex still ... Read More...
Month: June 2014
Nige visits the French town of Dieppe, once home to Oscar Wilde, Frits Thaulow and a society of Anglophile artists... About this time last year I headed for Dieppe to spend a few days as a summer flaneur, a thoroughly restorative trip. Dieppe retains its unique, slightly faded charm, and its ... Read More...
Working at Waterstone's in the early 1990s, Steerforth quickly discovered that bookshops were magnets for eccentrics, kleptomaniacs and the mentally ill - and that was just the staff... Sometimes I find it hard to believe that I spent the best part of 18 years working in bookshops. Where did all the ... Read More...
Richard Wagner was 'about as detestable as it is possible for a man to be'. And as for Cosima Wagner... Never thinking for a moment that I would ever use my Sue Ryder Loyalty Card, what did I discover there a few weeks ago but the first volume of Cosima Wagner's ... Read More...
No sniggering at the back, please, as we plunder Wikipedia for this week's unusual article about a village in Dorset that probably never appeared in any of Thomas Hardy's novels... Shitterton is a hamlet in Dorset, England. It has attracted worldwide attention for its name, which dates back at least a thousand years and ... Read More...
Word Cup fever has reached The Dabbler! Here's Frank's complete guide to the foopball tournament... Next week sees the beginning of the 2014 World Cup foopball tournament, What this consists of, for the uninitiated, is a few weeks during which men in shorts run around grassy fields, huffing and puffing and ... Read More...
Crumbling châteaux and closet gay Counts - here's Gaw's terrific tale of some strange lodgings he took whilst playing rugby in South-West France.... Being a professional sportsman isn't all it's cracked up to be. It's actually very boring. Training isn't mentally stimulating and professional sportsmen tend not to be that interesting; ... Read More...
Of course Michael Gove didn't actually ban any American books from schools, but that didn't stop a good argument about British and American literature. Rita weighs in... Two contrary news stories from Britain caught this librarian’s attention recently as they both have to do with books. First was education minister Michael ... Read More...
Can you buy an ordinary bottle of wine, stick it in your garage for a few years and expect it to improve with age? Henry Jeffreys tries a scientific experiment... It’s not often I get told off for not talking about wine. In fact a few years ago a flatmate bought me ... Read More...
To the Watershed cinema and ‘digital creativity centre’, to hear Jonathan Meades talk about his new book. The event was part of the Bristol Festival of Ideas, and my escort was the combative Islington-based journalist Pippa Tregaskis, who two years ago interviewed Meades for The Dabbler ahead of his bewildering BBC ... Read More...
