Brit dons his heavy-duty waterproofs and grimly takes up his bucket and spade in a traditional British seaside resort... A few weeks ago I found myself clamped in the teeth of a North Sea gale, on a bitter July Tuesday, trying to make a sandcastle from the brown sludge of Skegness beach. It was a corporate team-building thing. ... Read More...
Britain
James Hamilton, the Dabbler's great sport-theory iconoclast and destroyer of accepted wisdoms, looks at some footballing 'Golden Ages'... I've been following football for thirty years - since the days of Ron Greenwood's England - and one minor consequence of that is that a younger generation now accuse me of having lived through ... Read More...
Fired by Jonathan Law’s recent reference to the man, Jonathon Green brings us another Hero of Slang. John Taylor: The Water Poet. Taylor was born in Gloucester in 1578; his father may have been a barber-surgeon. He was educated in the town but abandoned school when he found Latin grammar too challenging. In the ... Read More...
From the archives, Gaw examines a countryside classic... I've been reading Oliver Rackham's The History of the Countryside, a book full of ideas, observations and interesting facts. It's a great myth-buster and is permeated by a sceptical curiosity that's never shy of actually visiting a patch of land if that's what's ... Read More...
James Hamilton examines the phenomenon of nostalgia... I've never had it: the lightly held, easily tossed-off belief that the past was "simpler" or "more innocent." And little wonder. I spent most of my childhood obscurely but thoroughly scared; even now, many years later, I find myself disassociating under stress or seeking ... Read More...
I don't know how he did it, but a few weeks ago Evan Davis managed to smuggle a quite shocking heresy past the the BBC editors. In an episode of Made in Britain he argued, gently but persuasively, that the primary cause of the collapse of heavy British industry in late ... Read More...
Beautiful Birmingham... ah, the Inner Ring Road. Yes, it's my kind of town... ... Read More...
Death-sweats, Paddington spectacles and gallows humour this week, as Jonathon Green continues his slang tour of London with a trip to Tyburn... It is an old place. A crossroads where as we know wicked deeds assemble. It had a marker: Oswulf’s stone, seemingly pre-Roman and which may have been the meeting-place ... Read More...
Back with a bang, Dabbler foodie expert Jassy explains how to make dressed crab - beginning with murdering it... When I get nostalgic for the seaside, I fondly imagine sitting down at a rough wooden table and eating crab smeared on brown bread, wiping my fingers on a plasticky paper napkin ... Read More...
Philip Wilkinson is the author of over 40 books, including The English Buildings Book, and most recently The High Street, written in conjunction with the BBC TV series. Happily for us, he’s also the curator of the English Buildings Blog, a firm favorite here at The Dabbler. In this new ... Read More...
