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 (221)
'Universities are teaching English Literature students how to concentrate long enough to read lengthy novels. Some institutions are offering "reading resilience" courses to students...' So begins a news story in The Times, the rest of which is unfortunately concealed behind a paywall, but I think we get the gist:...
We know what poets sound like, don't we? They speak in Received Pronunciation, sometimes in a curiously strangulated form – think T.S. Eliot – or in a kind of Oxford drawl, like Philip Larkin, or in the fruitier-than-fruit tones of Dylan Thomas, or in a more relaxed version of 'posh', like Betjeman. Regional accents...
October already, and both the Rev. Richard Coles and Bryan Appleyard have posted Robert Frost's 'October' on Facebook (great minds, etc.). The advance of autumn affects poets in different ways. Emily Brontë positively welcomes it, complete with its promise of winter to come –Fall, leaves, fall; die, flowers,...
Well, here's an unexpected development: a recent post on this blog has attracted 1,000 views – a figure unheard of since the good old days when blogging was enjoying its golden age. The post in question was this one – and it looks as if several other posts could soon be following it into the fabled land of four...
The garden of our house in Lichfield backs onto a school playing field – which is good news because (a) it means the garden has an open view and is not overlooked, and (b) we both happen to like hearing the voices of children at play, at least when they're of primary school age. Gavin Ewart writes about this in a...
Appended to Sassoon's The Old Century is a further memoir, Seven More Years, which carries young Siegfried's story forward into the new century. Towards the end of it comes his memorable encounter with a Camberwell Beauty, which some readers might remember from my book, The Butterfly: Flights of Enchantment. While...
I have rather too much going on at the moment, including some soul-sapping technical difficulties resulting from a change of computer, and a couple of books to read for review at something of a breakneck speed (for me) – but, on the positive side, I did manage an epic day trip down to the south coast and back...
I've been reading Siegfried Sassoon's memoir of his early years, The Old Century (and a very good read it is). Being born a Sassoon, Siegfried was vaguely aware that he had a lot of rich relations, but he saw nothing of them – with one exception, Auntie Rachel, his father's sister, who was Mrs Frederick Beer, and...
This curious photograph – a silver print from a silver gelatine glass negative, dated 1885 – is titled 'The Apotheosis of Degas', and shows that artist sitting on the steps of a house in Dieppe surrounded by worshippers. Created with the help of a Dieppe portraitist and photographer, Walter Barnes, it is a parody of...
It's not every day that you get to mark the centenary of someone still living – but today is the 100th birthday of the still very much alive broadcaster, actor and DJ Pete Murray (born Peter Murray James). His father was a Great War veteran who was injured in a gas attack at the Somme, and Murray claims to have been...
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