Nige on a legendary hippie and his surprising family connection... One of the more surprising facts about John Snagge, the old-school BBC radio announcer and boat race commentator ('I can't see who's in the lead, but it's either Oxford or Cambridge') is that he was the guardian of a legendary figure of ... Read More...
About Author Profile: Nige
Luxuriating in his suburban idyll, Nige considers the blackbird, and an effusive Victorian poet... There are sometimes nights when the sun is out, the air is warm, and one is able to enjoy that supreme expression of the suburban idyll - sitting out in the garden in the cool of the evening as ... Read More...
Nige admires the work of Charles Holden, the architect behind Southgate Tube Station, one of London's finest Art Deco Underground stations... That is not a newly landed art deco UFO above - it is Southgate Underground station, towards the end of the Cockfosters branch of the Piccadilly Line. I discovered this part of ... Read More...
Nige recommends the short fiction of A.E. Coppard - a writer who deserves a revival... I recently mentioned A.E. Coppard, a writer whose name was unknown to me when I came across it - and seems to be generally forgotten, though a book of selected stories, Weep Not My Wanton, was issued only ... Read More...
For sheer painterly pleasure, Nige says you can't do better than visit the John Singer Sargent exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery, running until 25 May... To the National Portrait Gallery for the John Singer Sargent exhibition, Portraits of Artists and Friends, which is, unsurprisingly, brilliant. Such dash, such effortless technical mastery, ... Read More...
The Travellers' Library series of books published by Jonathan Cape gives a fascinating glimpse of literary fashion in the 1920s, including names that have endured, others that have been completely forgotten, and still others currently halfway to obscurity... My edition of James Joyce's Dubliners was published in Jonathan Cape's series The Travellers' Library ... Read More...
'Jays are not nearly so nice as they look' - that's how people used to write nature books. Ornithology-enthusiast Nige makes a Proustian discovery in a charity shop... There it was, in the window of the local hospice shop: British Birds and Their Nests - by Brian Vesey-Fitzgerald, with colour illustrations by Allen W. ... Read More...
More nostalgia today, as Nige makes a pitch for the next building toy-based Hollywood blockbuster... Following the success of The Lego Movie, the time is surely ripe for Bayko: The Movie. For those of us who spent a formative portion of our early years assembling red, white and green 30s-style houses from bits ... Read More...
Nige is blown away by Norwegian painter Peder Balke's masterly seascapes, in an exhibition currently showing at London's National Gallery... I admit I'd never heard of Peder Balke before reading about this exhibition. Balke was a Norwegian painter (1804-87) whose mature style was so heavily criticised in his day that he ... Read More...
Nige enjoys the masterful wood engravings of the great Eric Ravilious... One of the most welcome birthday presents I've ever received was a handsome volume of Eric Ravilious Wood Engravings, beautifully produced by the Mainstone Press. The versatile and prolific Ravilious was as naturally gifted a wood engraver as he was a watercolorist, ... Read More...
