Nigeness
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Nige, who, like Mr Kenneth Horne, prefers to remain anonymous, was also a founder blogger of The Dabbler and a co-blogger on the Bryan Appleyard Thought Experiments blog. He is the sole blogger on this one, and his principal aim is to share various of life's pleasures. These tend to relate to books, art, poems, butterflies, birds, churches, music, walking, weather, drink, etc, with occasional references to the passing scene. His book, The Mother of Beauty: On the Golden Age of English Church Monuments, and Other Matters of Life and Death, is available on Amazon or direct from the author.
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All posts (222)
Yesterday I was walking in the Gloucestershire Cotswolds. It was a well planned five-miler, taking in three good churches (Turkdean, Hampnett and the magnificent wool church of Northleach – all open), a decent lunch, and glorious rolling countryside with wide views – pastureland and paddocks, drystone walls,...
I spent the weekend over the border in Derbyshire, visiting my cousin, and on Saturday we found ourselves dodging the rain in Belper. Where better to shelter awhile than in a large charity bookshop? There I spotted an anthology edited by Wendy Cope – The Funny Side: 101 Humorous Poems. Having found much to enjoy in...
Dick Davis, one of our finest living poets (and translators), has always published sparingly. If and when his complete poems are published – and they really should be – they will not make a fat volume. Davis favours short forms, including epigrams. Here is one of my favourites – On EpigramsThis neat, egregious...
One of the pleasures of grandparenthood is enjoying all over again some of the things that most entertained us in our own childhood and, later, when our own children were young. Books, of course, but also vintage animations – the great Chuck Jones classics, Popeye, Oliver Postgate's Bagpuss and Ivor the Engine, John...
Peter Porter was born on this day in 1929, in Brisbane. His career, and his life, got off to a faltering start, but by 1955 he was living in London and associating with the informal group of poets known as, er, 'The Group'. It was this poem, published in the TLS in January 1960, that brought Porter to wider...
Recently I was watching a BBC4 programme about Persian history, and naturally the poetry of Ferdowsi – still a national hero – came up. When the presenter started talking about the tragic story of Rostam and Sohrab, part of Ferdowsi's epic Shahnameh, it rang a loud bell. I studied this tale at school – not in...
I've been down in Worthing these past few days (yes, again – and again on family business). A seaside resort in winter is not a terribly attractive prospect, especially if the winter has been as relentlessly rainy and bleak as this one. The sea off Worthing was behaving much as described in this Betjeman poem,...
Today is the birthday of the great Victorian critic John Ruskin (born 1819). The last time I marked his birth was way back in 2009, when this blog was in its swaddling clothes. I wrote then about the Ruskinian notion of 'illth', the opposite of wealth, creative not of well-being but of ill-being. I was writing when...
Yesterday I was in London, having lunch with an old friend, who, it turned out, had not seen the rehung National Gallery (despite living in London – ain't it always the way?). As we were close by, we stepped in, and I had the pleasure of seeing her enjoy the impact of the magnificent rehang for the first time. One...
'So, this is death. Well.' With these words, on this day in 1881, Thomas Carlyle died, at the ripe age of 85 – remarkable longevity for one who seemed never to be in good health. 'Thomas Carlyle is dead at last, by the acknowledgment of all newspapers,' wrote Henry James, kicking off a long, appreciative but by no...
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