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 (223)
After a spectacular butterfly summer, there has been very little action since the rains and winds of early autumn put a sudden end to the season. Even now, when we're enjoying a little taste of Indian summer (here, at least), there is little flying, apart from the indomitable whites, speckled woods and red admirals....
One of the regular treats of my boyhood was going to see the latest Peter Sellers film as it came out. My father was a huge fan, and so was I, right from the get-go. I remember seeing a string of wonderful comedies – I'm All Right Jack, Two Way Stretch, The Wrong Arm of the Law, Heavens Above!, Dr Strangelove, the...
Today is the birthday of Samuel Johnson (born 1709). Over on Anecdotal Evidence, Patrick Kurp marks the occasion with a piece on various translations of one of Johnson's Latin verses, a memory of swimming in the waters of Stowe Pool in Lichfield, a 'meditation on memory, time's bittersweet passing, and lost youth'....
Radio 3 this morning was getting very excited about Radio 6 Music's T-Shirt Day (not to be confused with International T-Shirt Day or National T-Shirt Day – heaven knows what thrills await us on those dates). This is the kind of thing that tends to happen on the once sedate Radio 3 (what would Piers Burton-Page...
Here are the 'always excellent Dick Davis' and the 'right decent geezer' Samuel Johnson back already. Davis is writing (to fellow poet R.L. Barth) about Johnson's Lives of the Poets – and about Johnson the man...With Johnson's Lives of the PoetsHe wrote these quick biographiesTo be instructive and to please; In them...
'Natural rights is simple nonsense,' declared Jeremy Bentham: 'natural and imprescriptible rights, rhetorical nonsense – nonsense upon stilts.' He was right: rights are not 'natural', they are prescribed, i.e. created, by human societies (those human societies that like the idea). The notion of 'natural rights' is...
Having spent too long reading little but non-fiction (much of it for review), I turned back to fiction recently, reading A Wreath of Roses by Elizabeth Taylor, recommended and lent to me by my cousin. I had read a few Taylors, including what is surely her masterpiece, Angel, and was happy to discover more. Published...
Time for a poem. Here is one by the always excellent Dick Davis, about a situation every parent – and grandparent – will be familiar with: the awful helplessness we feel in the presence of a child inconsolably, unreachably upset or hurt...A Bit of PaternityTo tell your weeping child,'This too will pass, believeMe,...
The day before yesterday I was walking around the Samuel Johnson birthplace museum with my brother and walking friends (their first time, and they were impressed). One of the interactive attractions caught my eye – 'Your Letters to Samuel Johnson'. Visitors were invited to take a sheet of paper headed 'Dear S.J.',...
Yesterday I finally made it to London for a much postponed lunch with an old friend and a visit to the Whistler exhibition at Tate Britain ('the Tate', as it will always be to me). Arriving in London from Lichfield is always a shock: the noise – and the people! Not to mention the traffic fumes. En route to lunch I...
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