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 (242)
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...
I recently posted a couple of Venetian-themed poems by Robin Saikia which had impressed me. Seeking to find out more about this little-known but clearly talented poet, I discovered that he had published, in 2020, a dramatic monologue titled A Very Fine Cat Indeed, devoted to Dr Johnson's beloved Hodge. Naturally I...
I spent much of the weekend in transit, travelling down to Guildford, in my old home county, and back again the next day. We were there for the post-wedding celebration of an old friend who has remarried – and a fine celebration and joyous occasion it was. What matters here is the back story, for this friend is the...
Yesterday I was walking in the Oxfordshire countryside with my brother and walking friends. It was a gloriously sunny morning – the first in a long dreary while – and, for a wonder, it stayed that way for most of the day, only clouding over briefly in the early afternoon. Our walk began in the attractive little...
Despite appearances, R.S. Thomas, the crag-faced curmudgeon of Sarn-y-Plas, had a tender side, which showed up quite often in his poetry, as in this love poem to his long-suffering wife of 51 years, the artist Mildred (Elsi) Eldridge –LuminaryMy luminary,my morning and eveningstar. My light at noonwhen there is no...
Yesterday Patrick Kurp posted a poem, 'Larkin's Typewriter' – a 5-4-5 sonnet evoking Larkin's sad loss of his poetic afflatus – by a poet I had never heard of before, Robin Saikia. Taking a look online, I discovered that Saikia has written at least one other Larkin-themed poem, 'Philip Larkin's Death in Venice', in...
Manet Day again – the great Edouard's 194th birthday – and I realise that I've never posted on the subject of one of his best-known and most mysterious paintings, Le Déjeuner sur l'Herbe. There might be a reason for this, as I'm not sure there's much that can usefully be said about it. It's certainly not helpful to...
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