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)
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...
An interesting piece in The Times yesterday, about literary couples, i.e. cohabiting couples composed of two writers, each pursuing their own projects or, sometimes, collaborating. American examples include Paul Auster and Siri Hustvedt, Joan Didion and John Gregory Dunne, Noah Baumbach and Greta Gerwig. From this...
Having recently read Richard Holmes's excellent account of Tennyson's early years, The Boundless Deep, I was amused to come across this picture, in J.G. Riewald's Beerbohm's Literary Caricatures (a great book for browsing in). It shows Thomas Woolner, the only sculptor in the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, sculpting...
Consciousness. I know I have it, but have no idea what it is or where it comes from (nor does anyone else, whatever they may say). I am equally sure that I have a soul, but again have no idea what it is or where it comes from. Are consciousness and soul the same thing, or aspects of the same thing? Is soul perhaps a...
This morning I took delivery of a new Panama hat, the old one having become an offence to the eye, and summer being in the offing. The new hat, I was delighted to note, was made by the firm of Borges & Scott – a nice literary double-act. Sadly, Jorge Luis had no connection with the hat-making dynasty, which is based...
Here, for no particular reason, is a poem by Charles Stuart Calverley which perfectly demonstrates what Pope called the art of sinking in poetry – also the perils of ending a stanza with a two-syllable line. Changed I know not why my soul is rack'd: Why I ne'er smile as was my wont: I only know that, as a fact, I...
It's not only the poets who are getting older (spoiler alert: we all are). Last night, for some reason, I was looking up Michael Caine, and discovered that he is all of 93. I've always liked Caine, who seems to be that rare thing among actors, a proper mensch, a regular guy. I wondered if he'd made an appearance on...
The poets are getting older: Kay Ryan is 80, Dana Gioia is 75, Dick Davis is 81, Billy Collins is 85 – and today Ted Kooser turns 87. He's a poet who tends to get dismissed as a Midwesterner dispensing homely wisdom, but I think this is unfair (and reminiscent of the way some have dismissed Willa Cather as a...
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