Nige admires the work of Charles Holden, the architect behind Southgate Tube Station, one of London's finest Art Deco Underground stations... That is not a newly landed art deco UFO above - it is Southgate Underground station, towards the end of the Cockfosters branch of the Piccadilly Line. I discovered this part of ... Read More...
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The name of Sylvester Clarke is receding now, but during the first half of the 1980s in his years at Surrey it hung over county cricket in the same way that Sonny Liston's had hung over boxing: star-crossed, whispered, feared... Steve Waugh could feel the will of his Somerset team-mates "disintegrating" ... Read More...
‘Tell me a story from your head instead’, commanded C, apparently bored by the mild misadventures of Paddington. A great weariness came upon me. ‘What about?’ I said, closing the book. ‘About… Mr Chocolate Cake,’ she said at random. ‘And a Princess.' ‘Oh for goodness sake’, I said, and proceeded to tell the most ... Read More...
Susan learns the story the striking red suit worn by the late, lamented, notorious artist Sebastian Horsley... The star attraction at this year's Visuology Lecture, which took place at Viktor Wynd’s Museum of Curiosities (apart from innumerable specimens of taxidermy, twisted ephemera, macabre and medical memorabilia), was Savile Row tailor, Richard Anderson. One of the ... Read More...
How might history have turned out if Skippy the Bush Kangaroo had been called 'Googie' instead, asks Frank urgently.... Skippy The Bush Kangaroo might so easily have been called Googie. The eponymous marsupial heroine of the Australian television series, which ran from 1966 to 1968 and is still shown regularly on ... Read More...
Today's poetry and painting piece features Edward Thomas, Paul Nash, W.H. Davies and birds' nests... In addition to their intrinsic beauty, the bare trees of late winter and early spring offer an opportunity for the discovery of birds' nests. This thought brings to mind Edward Thomas, who was a great searcher ... Read More...
Seamus Sweeney reads God’s Fifth Column: A Biography of the Age 1890-1940 - an unusual work by an author who at one time looked like becoming one of the greats... William Gerhardie has achieved an odd kind of fame; famous for not being famous. He is a writer whose champions specifically focus on ... Read More...
Rita decides to take a leaf out of the book of NBC's Brian Williams and jazz up her anecdotes a bit. So here's the story of Rita's Life in America: the Dramatic Version (with fact checking supplied by a scrupulous research librarian)... On my first flight out of New York the plane made a ... Read More...
Mahlerman ponders the effects - or non-effects - of age upon four great composers... The days of our years are threescore years and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labour and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away. I ... Read More...
Nige enjoys the masterful wood engravings of the great Eric Ravilious... One of the most welcome birthday presents I've ever received was a handsome volume of Eric Ravilious Wood Engravings, beautifully produced by the Mainstone Press. The versatile and prolific Ravilious was as naturally gifted a wood engraver as he was a watercolorist, ... Read More...