Is it possible to capture the essence of a place in a piece of music? Mahlerman examines some composers who tried... In the early years of the 19th Century (certainly not before) the idea that the essence of a region or country, the weight of its social institutions and its most ... Read More...
Year: 2014
Christmas is coming, so carve yourself a dainty slice of Turducken (but go easy on the Ortolan Bunting), this week's weird Wikipedia article unearthed by the Wikiworm... Turducken is a dish consisting of a deboned chicken stuffed into a deboned duck, which is in turn stuffed into a deboned turkey. The word. turducken is a portmanteau of turkey, duck, and chicken. The ... Read More...
Google and Wikipedia have utterly transformed our relationship with knowledge, and now everything we need to know seems to be accessible within seconds. We have gained much - but what have we lost?... The novelist Jean Rhys, after a long period of inactivity, responded to her publisher’s gentle suggestion that she ... Read More...
Erudite 'bun nating' Nige introduces the inventive pidgin language of Tok Pisin... Tok Pisin is a form of Pidgin English and is widely spoken in Papua New Guinea. It developed as a result of Pacific Islanders intermixing, when people speaking numerous different languages were sent to work on plantations in Queensland and ... Read More...
Is Francis the anti-American Pope?... I’m not sure that I believe in a God, but I do believe in Pope Francis. The man known as “the Bishop of the slums” in his native Argentina represents a brand of Catholicism I recognize from the era of Pope John XXIII. As a student ... Read More...
In the final part of our serialisation of The Whartons of Winchendon... Jonathan Law revisits Winchendon - a place both 'perfectly mysterious and rather dull' and considers the historical legacy of the remarkable Wharton family... I’m climbing the ridge road to Winchendon for the first time in months, the first since ... Read More...
Nudging our way through the drinkers and smokers outside the Bath Pavilion on a cold rain-spotted Friday night Mrs Brit and I bumped into Ian, an old friend. I’m always bumping into Ian and always pleased for it. He’s the best drunk I’ve ever known, by which I mean it ... Read More...
In today's poetry feature Stephen considers the importance of being idle... I think of idleness as a good thing. I do not associate idleness with lassitude, laziness, or sloth. Rather, I associate it with repose, reverie, and contemplation. People who carry on cellphone conversations in public are in dire need of idleness. ... Read More...
Who had the most double-barrelled surname ever? The Wikiworm consults Wikipedia to find out... Leone Sextus Denys Oswolf Fraudatifilius Tollemache-Tollemache de Orellana Plantagenet Tollemache-Tollemache (10 June 1884 – 20 February 1917) was a captain in the British Army who died during the First World War. He has been stated to have had the longest English surname on ... Read More...
In this story, extracted from Frank's new book The Funny Mountain, an 18th century Baron's ha-ha wall plays an important role in intergalactic warfare... Writers of science fiction are fond of the invisible force-field, an unseen barrier which unexpectedly stops a spaceman, or the evil Thargon, in his tracks. Landscape gardeners ... Read More...
