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 (238)
Feeling a sudden urge to have a classic poetry anthology by my bedside, I took a look in one of my local charity shops, and straight away found this beauty. I believe I already have it somewhere, in its familiar large format and in a later edition – but this version is duodecimo, printed on India paper, all...
As the BBC's lawyers try to find a form of words that will appease the Orange Man Across the Water – to the BBC an embodiment of all that is wrong with the world – and thereby avoid having to pay him extremely hefty damages, I find myself experiencing a strong sense of deja vu. This blog was but a few months old...
On Armistice Day, the mind inevitably turns to the 'war poets' – a mixed bunch, some of whom overtly took war and 'the pity of war' as their subject, approaching it head-on, while others, notably Edward Thomas, were more tangential in their approach. Although he was at his creative peak during his years of war...
I see that it was 100 years ago today that Richard Burton (né Richard Walter Jenkins Jr) was born – that would explain why I happened upon Under Milk Wood on the radio the other day (and felt no kindlier towards it for having heard it again). Blessed with preposterously good looks and a superb baritone voice and...
I've been reading about a character called Richard Brothers, who styled himself as, among other things, the Revealed Prince of the Hebrews, the Slain Lamb of the Revelation, and God Almighty's Nephew – this last title, in particular, attracting mockery in some quarters (its justification was that the British are in...
My friend the Emily Dickinson maven sends me many a Dickinson gem that I've never come across before (I came late to her poetry). One of the latest was this November poem, with its startling final image – who but Emily Dickinson could have come up with that?The Day grew small, surrounded tightBy early, stooping...
The great Venetian genre painter Pietro Longhi, born on this day in 1701, painted mostly indoor scenes – including his famous Exhibition of a Rhinoceros in Venice – but he sometimes ventured outdoors, as in this typically cheery scene of duck hunters on the lagoon.Is the smartly dressed hunter firing arrows at the...
On this day in 1957 a mongrel from the streets of Moscow was launched into orbit around the Earth, strapped into the Soviet spacecraft Sputnik 2 – the first dog in space. Laika, as she was named, was never going to survive the journey, as the technology to allow safe re-entry into the atmosphere had not yet been...
I noticed this morning that the front page of one of the nationals claimed that the Lichfield heckle was the 'last straw' for the King, and stung him into decisive action, banishing his brother, the erstwhile Duke of York and Prince Andrew, into the outer darkness (i.e. a more than comfortable house on the agreeable...
Halloween, Schmalloween – here at Nigeness, 31st October is always Keats's birthday (born 1795, in Moorgate, London, where his father was ostler at the Swan and Hoop inn). On this day in 1818, Keats signed off on his long letter to his brother George and his pregnant wife Georgiana, who were trying to start a new...
On this day in 1618, having fallen foul of the monarch once too often, Sir Walter Ralegh, explorer, statesman, soldier and superb writer of poetry and prose, faced death on the scaffold in Old Palace Yard, Westminster. He urged the executioner to make haste, for 'at this hour my ague comes upon me. I would not have...
I see that another statue of Jane Austen has been unveiled, this time in Winchester Cathedral close. Fair enough – it's her 250th anniversary year, and she died at Winchester and is buried in the cathedral. The statue is by Martin Jennings, who has a good record with this sort of thing, having created the excellent...
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