Brit reviews 'The Age of Innocence - Football in the 1970s' a stunning new photographic book published by TASCHEN... Golden Age-ism ‑ the idea that in a particular era the stars shone brighter, the greats were greater and the men were real men instead of spoilt prima donnas or professional drones ... Read More...
Like Kim Wilde I was in the nineteen-eighties much attracted to the kids in America. I had a hankering to join them in gang bike rides around their capacious Californian neighbourhoods, and to eat delicious junk food in their diners, and to outwit their Fratellis and other incompetent bandits and ... Read More...
Why is it so hard to turn around on the street without indulging in some meaningless ham acting? Here at last is Brit's complete Beginner's Guide to the phenomenon known as Pavement Panto™... Well, he couldn't keep walking north forever. At the next corner he stopped, looked indecisive, then patted himself all ... Read More...
Terry Stiastny - the former BBC journalist who has Dabbled here - has a debut novel out on July 17, published by John Murray. Acts of Omission is a tale of political intrigue and the legacy of the Cold War. Here's Brit's review... It has been alleged that when I was ... Read More...
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...
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...
I have lately become preoccupied with the desolate brown eyes of Jose Carreras. They star in this footage of his attempt to record the soundtrack to West Side Story under the pitiless direction of Leonard Bernstein. Bernstein, as Mahlerman showed us, is a real mensch. Also a bullying bastard. But who ... 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...
I was twelve when we moved from the city to the country, and soon after that deracinating adventure my father drove us to the National Canine Defence League kennels at West Down, where we acquired a dog. My parents had already secretly sussed out the prime candidate, a mongrel pup ... Read More...
Brit's Dabbler Diary will return next week. In the meantime, here's a piece discovered deep within the archives about a very unusual cartoonist... I have in my possession a little book, subtly entitled: FOUR CONFUSING TALES each illustrated by six UP-TURNABLE PICTURES from the incredible TOPSY-TURVY world of GUSTAVE VERBEEK. It has to be ... Read More...