There are times in life when one must stop, take stock, and wonder if civilisation has, quite simply, had its day. That moment arrived for me this week in the form of a gentleman - and I use the term in its loosest, most elasticated sense - by the name of Richard Cove. A man … Continue reading A Soleful Misuse of Public Services: In Praise of the Cheesy-Footed Charlatan of Worthing
Category: history
A Wizard’s Dream, or: Why My Toaster Is Probably a Portal
There are days - usually Tuesdays, always drizzly - when I suspect I’ve fallen out of time. I don’t mean in the Romantic sense, like I’ve become a flâneur of yesteryear, drinking absinthe with Baudelaire while watching Victorian dogs bark in sepia. No, I mean I’m quite literally out of step with whatever this “present” … Continue reading A Wizard’s Dream, or: Why My Toaster Is Probably a Portal
Arthur Wing Pinero: The Magistrate of Mirth and Other Dastardly Dalliances – Part Two of Dandy Dick
Or, how one man in a cravat brought Victorian theatre out of its corset and into its knickers. Before Wilde minced in with cigarette cases and cucumber sandwiches, and long before Coward lit up the drawing room with his razor-sharp repartee and possibly questionable moustache, there was Pinero. Arthur Wing Pinero, to give him his … Continue reading Arthur Wing Pinero: The Magistrate of Mirth and Other Dastardly Dalliances – Part Two of Dandy Dick
On Dandy Dick – Part One: Or, How to Ruin a Dean and Win a Race
Theology, gambling, and a horse named after a dandy – what could possibly go wrong? There are some things that should never mix: vicars and vodka, bishops and betting shops, or indeed, the very Reverend Augustin Jedd and anything with hooves. And yet in Arthur Wing Pinero’s frothy 1887 farce Dandy Dick, all these taboos … Continue reading On Dandy Dick – Part One: Or, How to Ruin a Dean and Win a Race
Langcliffe: A Quiet Benediction in Stone and Fur
Another little jaunt today as I round off my short stay in the Dales. Today we took tea not in the grand halls of empire, nor beneath the cloisters of cloaked abbots, but in the altogether finer establishment of the Langcliffe Village Hall, where the china clinks not in diplomatic negotiation but in defence of … Continue reading Langcliffe: A Quiet Benediction in Stone and Fur
Wording 