Had he lived, Roy Orbison would have been 75 this year. Here, Daniel Kalder writes about the Big O's transcendental power... For me, like most people, memory is intricately intertwined with music. Another Brick in the Wall pt 2 was a hit the year I started school, and so the song always ... Read More...
Religion
Win a copy of Memoirs of a Dervish As we related at the end of our exclusive interview with Robert Irwin on Monday, courtesy of Profile Books, we have ten copies of his Memoirs of a Dervish to give away to members of the Dabbler Book Club. The Spectator reckoned, ...this is a ... Read More...
Robert Irwin is an English writer who has written six novels and numerous studies of different aspects of Islamic culture. He is also the Middle Eastern editor of the Times Literary Supplement and has been instrumental in shaping the list of the hyper literary and thoroughly esoteric publisher Dedalus. While ... Read More...
Jonathon Green - visit his website here - is the English language's leading lexicographer of slang. His Green's Dictionary of Slang is quite simply the most comprehensive and authorative work on slang ever published. Today Jonathon continues his epic survey of the Seven Deadly Sins of Slang by getting mad, ... Read More...
In our occasional feature we invite guests to select the six cultural links that might sustain them if, by some mischance, they were forced to spend eternity in a succession of airport departure lounges with only an iPad or similar device for company. Today’s voyager is Barendina Smedley, a friend ... Read More...
For much of the 1990s Toby Ash was a regular media commentator on Middle East and international affairs, before descending unexpectedly into the murky world of business and commerce. The Dabbler is pleased to announce that he has now miraculously reappeared on the most south-westerly tip of England from where ... Read More...
Originally sited at 100 Pall Mall – a private townhouse – the National Gallery opened in its current Trafalgar Square premises in 1838. Being situated in the ‘very gangway of London’ is a key element of the National’s raison d'être. As Mr Justice Coleridge wrote in 1857, the Gallery should ... Read More...
Richard Taylor’s programme Churches: How to Read Them is showing on BBC4 (let’s face it, BBC4 is currently justifying the license fee on its own, with precious little help from elsewhere) and, a few episodes behind, on BBC2 on Friday evenings. Despite our supposed national Godlessness, countless people visit Britain’s churches every day, but how many of us ... Read More...
I'm no fan of the Pope but I do think he should be given a fair crack of the whip, so to speak. At least we might expect him to be described accurately and with a genuine attempt at objectivity by our more intelligent news organisations. Alex Thompson on Channel ... Read More...