Nige reflects on a precocious talent, and his disappointing son-in-law... I was up at Tate Britain, mooching among the rehung Romantics, when this very accomplished oil painting caught my eye. Its subject is Kensington Gravel Pits, and it was painted in 1811/12 - when Kensington was still a village surrounded by ... Read More...
About Author Profile: Nige
Nige celebrates a surprisingly influential singer... Today is the 91st birthday of Deanna Durbin, singing film star of the 1930s and 40s. And she is still alive to enjoy it, somewhere in France, where she has lived quietly for decades since turning her back firmly on the biz we call show ... Read More...
Nige resurrects a comic monster... The other day I found my mind turning to the Lancastrian comedian Frank Randle. I've been uneasily fascinated with this monster of comedy ever since reading King Twist: A Portrait of Frank Randle by - of all people - Jeff Nuttall, whose Bomb Culture was on ... Read More...
Laugh-out-loud funny but undeniably rum, Nige discovers a true original... Does anyone read Rose Macaulay these days? She seems to be one of those writers who figure large in their own time - their books sell well, they know everybody, are in everybody's memoirs and letters - and then, after death, ... Read More...
Nige discovers an overlooked gem - the poet William Matthews, who wrote sonnets about basketball, getting old and office life... Opening Don Paterson's anthology 101 Sonnets at random, I came across this beauty, by William Matthews, an American poet I had never encountered before (he died in his 50s in 1997, having never ... Read More...
Nige recommends the 'autobiography' of one of our greatest thespians... 'Acting is the supreme test of physical and mental courage. It is like climbing Everest single-handed in the dark. It is like painting the Sistine Chapel with a shark on your back. It is like being asleep on a helter-skelter with ... Read More...
Nige is dazzled by the debut of a now largely forgotten author... William Gerhardie's Futility, published in 1922 (and available for 1p from Amazon), was a dazzling debut novel. Here's how it begins: And then it struck me that the only thing to do was to fit all this into a book. ... Read More...
Nige recommends a 'jolly kind of nightmare'... I don't know why I had never got round to reading G.K. Chesterton's The Man Who Was Thursday - or, come to that, The Napoleon of Notting Hill. I've now repaired the first omission - and great fun it has been. Subtitled 'A Nightmare' and ... Read More...
Nige presents a mini-anthology: Hill on Rain... For obvious reasons, this 'summer' my mind turned to the poetry of rain - and thereby to Geoffrey Hill. Our Greatest Living Poet is a veritable laureate of rain. Rain is his res, his thing; no one writes better about English rain in its ... Read More...
Nige enjoys a flawed but enthralling masterpiece by an 'almost wilfully obscure' author... It's not often I come across a novel that I can truly say is like no other I've ever read - but The Book of Ebenezer Le Page is one such book. An old friend has been recommending it ... Read More...
