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Heroes of Slang 22: Moll Frith
The latest in Jonathon’s irregular (and irregularly numbered) Heroes of Slang series is actually a heroine… I took Maths O Level in late 1962 and passed. It was my last encounter with the subject....
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Frederick Furnivall: Some Moments in the Life Lexicographical
Ebullient, unembarrassable and the model for Rat in The Wind in the Willows – Mr Slang introduces the remarkable lexicographer Frederick Furnivall… Fink, Frith, what next? asked John Halliwell. Two...
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Disappearing Acts 2: Rosemary Tonks
Following his post on the folk singer Shelagh McDonald, Jonathan Law continues his occasional series on artists who have vanished into thin air with a look at a strange and possibly brilliant poet… If...
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Dabbler Diary – Gabriel’s Oboe
The Health Visitor (why do these public sector job titles always seem like Orwellian euphemisms for something sinister?) knocked on the door. She had come to assess my eldest daughter (Brit Jnr, but...
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Part 2 of Brit’s look at the influences on Van Morrison features the Godfather of Soul, the King of Rock ‘n Soul and some serious sweating… Few artists, as I noted a few months ago, have been more...
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Heroes of Slang 23: John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester
Jonathon’s latest Hero of Slang is a highly influential poet who wrote ‘more frankly about sex than anyone in English before the 20th century’. Be warned, by clicking Continue on this post you’ll be...
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Herbert Hodge – The Cabbie Philosopher
Introducing the philosophising cab driver seen by the British wartime establishment as ‘the ideal representative of the working man’, and sent off on propaganda tours… The DNB fails to take note and...
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Three Mad Pianists
From the Dabbler archives, some rather odd pianists… The evidence would suggest that piano virtuosity and wild eccentricity go hand-in-hand. Here are three of the most troubled Greats (and this is not...
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Nachtmusik
This week Mahlerman leads us into the spooky world of Bela Bartok… A glance at the photograph of the Hungarian composer Bela Bartok gives a clue perhaps to the tensions, at times almost unbearable,...
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Dabbler Diary – Giant spiders
What’s the earliest age it is possible to develop a phobia? I ask because my younger daughter E, who is seventeen months old, has taken to seeing spiders everywhere. She will be playing happily enough...
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Nicholas Clerihew Bentley
Nige reflects on one of Britain’s most prolific cartoonists… Today is the 106th birthday of the illustrator and cartoonist Nicolas Bentley, son of the writer E.C. Bentley, who invented that pithy...
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Charles Domery – Polyphage
I’m guessing that the gentleman described below probably wouldn’t have had any problems with a British Rail sandwich… Charles Domery (c. 1778 – after 1800), was a Polish soldier noted for his...
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“I know the plan. Kill him…”– Jeff Thomson’s luncheon anecdote
Jon Hotten discovers that Australian cricket legend Jeff Thomson – one of the most dangerous fast bowlers of all time – still knows the right way to tell a story… It was a few hours after David Warner...
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Beau Brummell – The Dandy’s Dandy
The great ‘Beau’ Brummell was the man who applied himself as none before to the reform and perfection of masculine dress… As Max Beerbohm puts it in his essay on Dandyism, ‘So to clothe the body...
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Muddy Mouth
When two of Frank’s heroes collide, great art is made… I was a teenage Samuel Beckett fan. I owed my early enthusiasm to my English teacher, Richard Shone, who taught me between the ages of thirteen...
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Suzanne Lenglen: Tennis As She Was Played
With Wimbledon getting underway once more, Nige takes a look back at one of tennis’s greatest stars… The glamorous, exuberant French tennis player Suzanne Lenglen died in 1938, aged just 39. She died...
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A green darkness in the centre
A treat for you today,as the great Jonathan Law reflects on hawthorn blossom, Ruskin’s dark secrets and the death of a maiden… According to W.G. Hoskins in The Making of the English Landscape, the...
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Heroes of Slang 24: Nelson Algren
He was the bard of Chicago and he tried to steal Simone de Beauvoir from Satre… Mr Slang introduces the man behind The Man with the Golden Arm… As Hamlet put it, look here upon this picture. And see...
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1p Book Review: A Book of Secrets by Michael Holroyd
Vita Sackville-West and Virginia Woolf The more Nige reads of Violet Trefusis, Vita Sackville West and Virginia Woolf in this excellent group biography, the more appalling they seem… The biography...
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Dabbler Diary – The Annual Golfer
An advantage the Annual Golfer has over the more frequent player is that for 364 days of the year he can completely empty his mind of any thoughts about golf. Not only is this excellent preparation...
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