Ian Vince's The Lie of the Land (buy it here) has won all manner of favourable recognition, most recently at the Hay Festival where it was named the National Trust's 2011 Outdoor Book of the Year. Here's a geology taster, followed by the chance to win a free copy. If there’s ... Read More...
Non-Fiction
It must be six months now since my first post on The Dabbler. Since then I have posted quite regularly and have enjoy participating in the wise, lively and good-natured banter that is daily Dabber life. So I like to think I am part of The Dabbler community; that I am ... Read More...
In a special guest post, author Sam Llewellyn explains why people misunderstand the purpose of maritime fiction, and why he founded the Marine Quarterly magazine... Brrring, went the telephone. Hello, said a woman’s voice, I am a researcher for Woman’s Hour on BBC Radio 4 and we are doing a programme on ... Read More...
In about 1996, I got a deal to write a book about unlicensed boxing. I was arrogant enough to think I could actually write a book. I wish I had the excuse of being young, but I wasn’t really. I was just younger, which is no excuse at all. What ... Read More...
W.G. Hoskins' The Making of the English Landscape, first published in 1955, has in many ways been overtaken by later studies, but is still the classic of its subject – and is undoubtedly the best written. Hoskins is animated by a love and deep, intimate knowledge of certain local landscapes - ... Read More...
Our fascination with the Gurkhas continues: A Gurkha soldier who single-handedly defeated more than 30 Taliban fighters has been awarded the Conspicuous Gallantry Cross by the Queen... In total he fired off 250 general purpose machine gun rounds, 180 SA80 rounds, six phosphorous grenades, six normal grenades, five underslung grenade launcher rounds and ... 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...
My online research suggests that any review of Elif Batuman’s remarkable book The Possessed: Adventures with Russian Books and the People who Read Them must open with the reviewer musing on how to categorise it, before settling, uncomfortably, on ‘memoir’. And who am I to blow against the wind? Let’s start with Elif’s ... Read More...
Have we hit some sort of bottom in our series? Judge for yourself - delivered in prose of awesome sterility, the North Korean despot's commitment to lies is unwavering. Onwards! I didn't want to read Kim Jong-il's Our Socialism Centered On the Masses Shall Not Perish. I was more interested in On Film. ... Read More...
Continuing our serialisation of the new handbook – The Theory and Practice of Blogmanship – or How To Win Arguments On The Internet Without Really Knowing What You Are Talking About (available as an eBook from Amazon or as a PDF here.) In this second extract, Noseybonk moves on to the ... Read More...
