Nige rediscovers a pioneering work of English natural history... The world was made to be inhabited by beasts, but studied and contemplated by man: 'tis the debt of our reason we owe unto God, and the homage we pay for not being beasts. Without this, the world is still as though ... Read More...
Dabbler Country
Out and about
Ever wondered why the date of Easter is so unpredictable? Professor Nick Groom explains the bewildering mathematical equations required to calculate Easter, and why our day-to-day lives are still to some degree governed by theological arcana... Saturday just past was Egg-Feast Saturday – the time for eating up eggs. The Sunday following ... Read More...
Professor Nick Groom's book The Seasons: An Elegy for the Passing of the Year is a celebration of the English seasons and the trove of strange folklore and often stranger fact they have accumulated over the centuries. Following his Christmas post for The Dabbler, Nick turns his attention to February... All the ... Read More...
Worm guides us through the jerry-built plotlands of Great Britain... Plotlands began in the 1870's as a way for speculators to offload marginal farmland as Britain's agrarian populace uprooted en masse to the big cities. Whether barren or dangerously flood prone, worthless land was portioned up and sold off square by ... Read More...
Suggestions for a fun family day out this summer... By some distance the least impressive museum I have ever visited is the Tomato Museum on the island of Guernsey. I think I was about fourteen when we went, so you can imagine the impression a tomato-based attraction would have made on ... Read More...
In which Nige goes for a walk in the Surrey Hills... Against the hot blue sky, the terraced knoll loomed enormous, its summit lost in a shimmering heat-haze. The grassy flanks seemed to radiate a reflected heat, enfolding us in a weighted, thyme-scented silence, enhanced rather than disturbed by the monotone ... Read More...
A treat for you today,as the great Jonathan Law reflects on hawthorn blossom, Ruskin's dark secrets and the death of a maiden... According to W.G. Hoskins in The Making of the English Landscape, the hawthorn hedges of England are to be seen in their full splendour on one particular date – ... Read More...
Who says paths are for walking? Toby Ash has taken to stopping and looking. These words by Irish poet Patrick Kavanagh have been playing on my mind: To know fully even one field or one land is a lifetime’s experience. In the world of poetic experience it is depth that counts, not ... Read More...
Exclusively for The Dabbler, writer Karen Campbell takes us on a trip on Glasgow's unique underground railway... Getting around Glasgow – Scotland’s biggest city – can be a delight on sunny days, as you stroll by the city’s seventy-odd parks, glittering shops and sandstone boulevards; it can be an assault course ... Read More...
Brit's away today so I thought that for a change I'd visit Derry in Northern Ireland in his absence. The news out of Belfast wasn't good, only 24 hours before they'd been burning flags on the streets. The Dabbler always aims to seek out the quirky and offbeat, and here I ... Read More...
