It is difficult to know what, exactly, to make of the sculptor Eric Gill, what with his indiscriminate sexual appetites and belief that all art was meaningless unless understood as an expression of religious conviction... In 1914 Eric Gill submitted a design – of George V astride a urinating horse – to ... Read More...
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Having successfully revived the novelist David Karp, Steerforth champions another undeservedly forgotten author... It isn't easy to find a more obscure novelist than David Karp, but I think I've succeeded. A visit to Camilla's Bookshop in Eastbourne yielded this novel, published in 1961: Yes, that is Larry Olivier on the front cover ... Read More...
Bosie's unpleasantness didn't end upon the death of his unfortunate lover Oscar Wilde... Born on 22 October 1870 was that singularly nasty piece of work, Lord Alfred Douglas, Oscar Wilde's 'Bosie'. His appalling treatment of Wilde, both during and after their relationship, is notorious, and Wilde's tolerance of it must be put ... Read More...
Some pretty twee writing on a wall prods Nige's memory of a once-famous author... Quotations have their uses. Without them, according to Wodehouse, any conversation between chaps would be nothing but an endless succession of 'What ho's. Oddly, these days, they are increasingly becoming an element of interior design, gracing the ... Read More...
My favourite Australian - the competition is not stiff - is Michael ‘Maxy’ Klinger. Michael Klinger is a softly-spoken, slender, crooked man with austerely cropped grey hair and the permanent wrinkled grin that pale-skinned Antipodeans have evolved to cope with the sun. He makes a living by carefully, repetitively striking ... Read More...
Back in September 2013, Frank Key posted on The Dabbler his idea of writing a book of very, very brief lives. Thanks in part to the enthusiastic reaction of the Dabbler audience and commenters, this idea has now become a reality, and Mr Key's Shorter Potted Brief, Brief Lives will ... Read More...
Jonathon Green continues his slang tour of London by venturing into an area just off Bethnal Green Road known as the "worst street in London"... So which was the worst street in London? Marked in the most stygian black (‘lowest class...occasional labourers, street sellers, loafers, criminals and semi-criminals’) on Charles Booth’s ... Read More...
In the Autumn issue of the excellent literary quarterly Slightly Foxed, our own Henry Jeffreys writes about the late David Nobbs' novel The Death of Reginald Perrin... It was eerie the first time I watched the Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin because it all felt so familiar. I’d bought a DVD ... Read More...
Back in September 2013, Frank Key posted on The Dabbler his idea of writing a book of very, very brief lives. Thanks in part to the enthusiastic reaction of the Dabbler audience and commenters, this idea has now become a reality, and Mr Key's Shorter Potted Brief, Brief Lives will ... Read More...
In the concluding episode of his series about Phantom Libraries and unwritten books, Jonathan Law comes at last to Borges, monkeys and Babel... In all this talk of lost and phantom libraries there is one giant figure we have yet to consider, although his presence may have been felt hovering in the wings: the great ... Read More...