Nigeness
Nice
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)
Last night I watched an episode of Andrew Graham-Dixon's The Art of Scandinavia. The subject was Danish art, so I was expecting good stuff. Alas, I was disappointed: for one thing, this was more a potted cultural history of Denmark, from Christian IV and the Frederiksborg Palace to the original Legoland, by way of...
I see that the charity Butterfly Conservation is running a poll to find Britain's Favourite Butterfly. At present, the Peacock is leading the vote, unsurprisingly, and in second place I'm delighted to see the Orange Tip, ahead of the Red Admiral. Has anyone voted for the Dingy Skipper, Britain's dullest butterfly, I...
And here, by way of counterweight to the International Day of Light, is a poem by Edward Thomas. As with the Donald Justice, it is one of his last and most beautiful (and untitled), written on his last Christmas at home with his family. A few months later, on Easter Monday 1917, Thomas was killed in action at Arras,...
I'm sure it can't have escaped your attention that today is International Day of Light. I must admit it was passing me by until it got a mention on the radio this morning. I've no clear idea what it is – some kind of Unesco invention, it seems – but it gives me the perfect pretext to post again one of my favourite...
The mid-May Weather here has been unseasonally cold, with sudden violent showers of rain and hail. The swifts have withdrawn to await better things; only the doughtiest butterflies – holly blues (amazingly abundant this year) and speckled woods – are showing themselves, in the rare moments of relative warmth; and...
Yesterday my old friend Bryan (Appleyard) paid a visit to Lichfield. We met, as usual, in the cathedral, which, on his last visit, was hosting an exhibition of Peter Marlow's wonderful photographs of English cathedrals. This time, by way of contrast, much of the cathedral was given over to a vast exhibition, The...
Today, the singer-songwriter Donovan, a man not given to understating his contribution to popular music, celebrates his 80th birthday. A while back, on the occasion of another Donovan birthday, I wrote this: 'Today is the 67th birthday of that titan of troubadours, Donovan. Singer-songwriter, poet, mystic,...
Well, there's no escaping the Attenborough centenary – it's everywhere, and will be all day, with a special concert from the Royal Albert Hall on TV this evening. It was 100 years ago today that the Great Man, our most assured National Treasure, was born – in Isleworth, by the Thames in Middlesex (though he did not...
I've been watching the reruns of Simon Schama's A History of Britain, a sweeping 15-part series that dates back to a time long before Schama became an annoying metroliberal pantomime dame – and to a time when the BBC would put good money into producing a straight, intelligent narrative history, presented without...
Today is Mrs N's birthday – and that of the inventor of the piano, Bartolomeo Cristofori (born 1655). One of his pianos, built in Florence in 1720, survives in playable condition, and this is what it sounds like (the pianist is Dongsok Shin, and the piece is a Scarlatti sonata, D9). Having a wooden rather than a...
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