This week, a hero of slang who showed that size does matter - in this case, the size of your list of terms for the you-know-what... Of the many canards that assail the object of my life’s toil and linguistic affections is that of verbal inadequacy, the mockery by the loquaciously ... Read More...
Dabbler Heroes
Gaw recalls a Welshman who was a self-made hero to some, a self-romanticising show-off to others. Brit's clip of Richard Burton reading Under Milk Wood from Lazy Sunday Afternoon the other week sent me looking for more opportunities to hear that voice. Here's a spell-binding excerpt from an interview where he talks about mining. ... Read More...
Scott Locklin looks back admiringly at an ancient Greek who dabbled more originally, profoundly and variously than pretty much anyone else ever. Εύδοξος ο Κνίδιος It’s a modern conceit that we are the most sophisticated people who ever lived. Much of what we know comes from a bunch of pederasts in ancient Magna ... Read More...
Jonathon Green introduces his favourite collector of slang (and an ancestor of The Dabbler's very own Jon Hotten), John Camden Hotten... SLANG represents that evanescent, vulgar language, ever changing with fashion and taste,...spoken by persons in every grade of life, rich and poor, honest and dishonest...Slang is indulged in from a ... 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...
Some of my most enduring memories of the two years I spent as a graduate student at Oxford are of the times I spent with Norman Stone, then the university’s professor of modern history. He was very clever but also witty, provocative and just damn fun to get drunk with. I ... Read More...
John Arlott called him 'the most variously gifted Englishman of any age,' and Arlott, conjuring his musty magic from an old typewriter set next a glass of something good and red, was probably right. The sheer unlikeliness of CB Fry continues to astonish, more than half a century after his ... Read More...
For someone born in Kent and educated at Westminster School, Shane Patrick Lysaght MacGowan is pretty damn Irish. If your image of MacGowan as the archetypal Paddy Baddie – a rebellious anti-hero straight out of the pages of a J P Donleavy novel: gap-toothed, black-toothed, staggering blind drunk from the bar-brawl ... Read More...
Jonathon Green continues his occasional 'Heroes of Slang' series by looking at American author George Ade... He was a mid-Westerner (Indiana and thus a ‘Hoosier’ maybe from the rustic’s faltering ‘Who’s here?’) and admirably prolific (93 titles in the Library of Congress). He had been a columnist on the Chicago Morning News and ... Read More...
Bob Dylan turns 70 today and to mark the event, four Dabbler Dylanists pick a favourite song and explain why he matters. Happy Birthday Bob! Mahlerman -- Thunder on the Mountain ROBERT ALLEN ZIMMERMAN Born: Duluth, Minnesota: May 24th, 1941 Occupations: Musician, Dabbler My, he's as slippery as mercury, but of one thing there is little doubt: ... Read More...