Continuing our tribute to Clive James , whose new collection A Point of View is The Dabbler Book Club's current monthly choice (sign up here if you're not yet a member), renowned internet hoaxer and comedy writer David Waywell explains why Clive, unlike Johann Hari - whose scathing interview with James forms a crucial chapter in ... Read More...
On Friday Brit the Elder posed a fiendish riddle for your puzzlement. Can you crack its secret and find the question to which Alby the owl provided the answer 'Twelve'? Stumped? Here's a clue, as we continue the story... ...But what was the question? Owl number six, in the cage next to ... Read More...
Gareth Rees lives in Clapton with his wife and two daughters. He spends every day wandering Hackney, Leyton and Walthamstow marshes with his dog Hendrix, avoiding his family and the pressures of life. He records his observations on his blog The Marshman Chronicles. In a Hallowe'en special, Gareth takes us on ... Read More...
Brit the Elder has supplied a fiendish riddle for your puzzlement. Can you crack its secret and find the question to which Alby the owl provides the answer? To prevent anyone (ie. Adelephant or JL) from giving it away, there'll be no comments for this one, so email your answer to editorial@thedabbler.co.uk ... Read More...
Our friends at Slightly Foxed (the real readers' quarterly - buy a subscription now!) have once again kindly allowed The Dabbler to dip into its rich archives. In this article from the Spring 2004 issue Roger Hudson discovers the "brilliant but eccentric" (not to mention "too licentious to be published") letters ... Read More...
The classics have virtually vanished from our state schools. Dr Peter Jones MBE, who writes the regular Ancient and Modern column in The Spectator and is now advising the Classics for All campaign, explains why we need to save Latin from educational oblivion... Bettany Hughes was recently filming in a small village in Syria. The ... Read More...
This highly entertaining 1p review comes from guest Mike Petty... Unlike other Saturday-afternoon staples like The Dam Busters and Reach for the Sky, the film of Ice Cold in Alex is based on a novel. I simply can't remember if I've read it before, so comprehensively has it been elbowed out ... Read More...
Today's 1p (or in this case, 1 cent) book is recommended by guest reviewer Michael Schauerte... Tomorrow I must begin a new life. How could I do it, with nothing but death behind me? Wladyslaw Szpilman’s new life began in January 1945. More than five years of death were behind him, stretching ... Read More...
This 1p Book Review comes from Simon Thomas of the popular Stuck in a Book blog... Those who don't like Jansson call her books boring - and if you read books primarily for plot, then she won't be the author for you. But if you choose your books for character, writing style, ... Read More...
Today's regular Sunday repeat is our 6 Clicks feature as completed by a literary blogger who writes from America's heartland. In Anthony Burgess’ short story The Endless Voyager, a businessman throws away his passport and wallet mid-transit and, unable to enter any country, spends the rest of his life shuttling from ... Read More...