Dabblers ahoy! A special exhibition dedicated to the work of the late, great Frank Key will be held at the Menier Gallery in London next month. The exhibit runs from Tuesday March 10 to Saturday March 14. On Tuesday 10th there will be a reception from 6 - 9 pm, where you ... Read More...
About Author Profile: Brit
Some cheering news! Nigel Andrew - aka our very own Nige of Nigeness - has written a beautiful, fascinating and highly original book... The Mother of Beauty about English parish churches - more specifically, the undervalued national treasure that is the vast and scattered collection of 17th Century church monuments. English churches ... Read More...
The inestimable Mr Frank Key - also known as Paul Byrne - died last week. There really was nobody like him, was there? Frank was the first regular columnist we recruited, and Key’s Cupboard ran every Friday, more or less without fail, from August 2010 to February 2016. Those years were, without any ... Read More...
Some sad news. John Jobling - aka the wonderful Malty - died in September. Malty was a prolific commenter on The Dabbler and its satellite blogs and there was no one quite like him. Actually, there was nobody remotely like him. Who can forget his idiosyncratic lexicon, peppered with unexpected Teutonisms ... Read More...
Brit reviews the second novel by Terry Stiastny (an occasional Dabbler), and finds it a subtle, ingeniously-crafted tale of betrayal and comeuppance... Terry Stiastny’s debut novel Acts of Omission - which won the 2014 Paddy Power Political Novel of the Year (and was reviewed on The Dabbler here) - established the ... Read More...
A master of vicious social satire, E. F. Benson was just one member of a powerhouse Victorian literary family that is now all but forgotten. But his Mapp and Lucia novels are immortal... This article by Andrew Nixon (aka Dabbler founder 'Brit') first appeared in Slightly Foxed: The Real Reader’s Quarterly, ... Read More...
Brit reviews the superb new 'anti-cookbook' from the mighty Jonathan Meades... The first thing I do with a cookbook is have a quick flick through to assess how effortful is the gist. On opening The Plagiarist in the Kitchen I found: To kill an eel you need a brick and a concrete surface. ... Read More...
The Dabbler is thriving over on Facebook - come and join us... The main site here is currently undergoing some restoration work, but fear not, The Dabbler continues to thrive over on Facebook - with original material, typically arcane and Dabblerish links and oddities, and lots of chattering from our world-famous community ... Read More...
Terry Wogan was only eight years older than David Bowie, but his soul was ancient... To my surprise, I felt slightly sadder about Terry Wogan’s death than about David Bowie’s. The thing about Wogan was that he was devoid of illusion about humans. He’d seen right through us, to the core, decades ... Read More...
Sean Penn's Rolling Stone 'interview' with drugs baron El Chapo contains some surprising details, finds Brit... Many Dabbler readers will be aware that there was a bit of a hoo-hah the other week about actor Sean Penn’s clandestine interview with fugitive Mexican drug baron and multiple murderer Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman. Fewer will ... Read More...
