The great 'Beau' Brummell was the man who applied himself as none before to the reform and perfection of masculine dress... As Max Beerbohm puts it in his essay on Dandyism, 'So to clothe the body that its fineness be revealed and its meanness veiled has been the aesthetic aim of ... Read More...
About Author Profile: Nige
Nige reflects on one of Britain's most prolific cartoonists... Today is the 106th birthday of the illustrator and cartoonist Nicolas Bentley, son of the writer E.C. Bentley, who invented that pithy biographical verse form, the Clerihew (E.C's middle name, also Nicolas's). For example (one of the better ones): John Stuart Mill, By a mighty ... Read More...
Nige reflects on the enduring appeal of a high Victorian painting... 'Flaming June eh?' we sigh, and roll our eyes, as the rain siles down relentlessly, the cold wind blows, and temperatures struggle to stay in double figures (in the new money). And so, unwittingly, we keep alive the name of the ... Read More...
He was a friend of Keats and almost as fine a prose stylist - what a pity then, that Benjamin Robert Haydon wanted to be a painter... Keats, Bewick & I dined together, Keats brought some friend of his, a noodle. After dinner, to his horror, when he expected we should ... Read More...
Nige revisits Beckett's first novel - 'very Irish, very clever', and prefiguring the great works that came after.. His troubles had begun early. To go back no farther than the vagitus. It had not been the proper A of international concert pitch, with 435 double vibrations per second, but the double ... Read More...
Nige marvels at the 'practically perfect' short stories of Canadian author Alice Munro... It took me a long time to finally get round to reading Alice Munro - perhaps I was put off by the sheer volume of praise for her 'practically perfect' work, or by the fact that she won ... Read More...
Sunday Times journalist (and occasional Dabbler) Bryan Appleyard has a new novel out, exclusively as an eBook. Nige enjoys the tale of the 'mad, enchanted dream suburb' of Bedford Park... First, of course, I must declare an interest: Appleyard and I go way back - two score years and more, man ... Read More...
Nige pays tribute to the exceptional unreadability of the originator of "It was a dark and stormy night"... Edward Bulwer-Lytton, born in 1803, was a hugely successful novelist in his day, now all but forgotten and unread, remembered only for incidentals. He coined the phrases 'the Great Unwashed' and 'the almighty dollar' ... Read More...
Nige discovers 'a true giant among comic characters'... Having enjoyed and admired Masters of Atlantis so much, I've been reading another of Charles Portis's novels - The Dog Of The South (available for 1p from Amazon). This is the story of one Ray Midge, who takes off on a long and eventful ... Read More...
Britain's triumphant Olympic year is drawing to an end - but will it still be remembered in 400 years? And is it time to reinstate the noble sport of dwile flonking in time for Rio?.. Few realise that the first Olympic revival took place not in the 19th century, but exactly ... Read More...
