Clik here to view.
Green’s Heroes of Slang 15: Tom Brown
This week Mr Slang salutes the man who gave us such terms as Tom, Dick and Harry, tub-thumper and, ahem, buttered bun… ‘I do not love thee Dr Fell The reason why I cannot tell; But this I know and...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Viv Richards: A Meeting with the King
Jon Hotten meets his cricketing hero and finds himself saying exactly the one thing he had been determined not to say… When he went to the ring, he was often smiling. He knew that when the heavyweight...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Dabbler Heroes: Fred Astaire
Nige pays tribute to the greatest dancer… Fred Astaire – especially when dancing with Ginger Rogers – is (and I admit to a sizeable blind spot in the area marked Dance) almost the only dancer I can...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Green’s Heroes of Slang 16: A.J. Liebling
Today’s hero of slang is “a literary, literate fat man” who loved food and French girls’ legs… I can write better than anybody who can write faster than me; and I can write faster than anybody who can...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Heroes of Slang 17: Rudyard Kipling
His soldier Tommy is one of the great English archetypes. But did Kipling invent or merely popularise him? Mr Slang investigates… Kipling, by allusion, has cropped up regularly in these posts. Enough...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Heroes of Slang 18: John Cleland
This week Jonathon Green salutes the author of Fanny Hill, a book with a single aim: ‘to write about a whore without using the language that was seen as part of her stock in trade’… It is my intention...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Heroes of Slang 18: Eric Partridge
The leading lexicographer of slang salutes his predecessor… How embarrassing. There he is. Always has been. Right under my nose. Or at least right behind me. And I never noticed. My very own...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Heroes of Slang 19: Henry Mayhew
Jonathon introduces Henry Mayhew: contemporary of Dickens, literary phenomenon, pioneer sociologist and hero of slang… The lexicographer records the vocabulary of slang, but, unless their dictionaries...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Mad Jack Churchill
This week my delve into the weirder side of Wikipedia brought up the story of Jack Churchill – a fearlessly eccentric British warrior. Lieutenant Colonel John Malcolm Thorpe Fleming “Jack” Churchill,...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Suburban Sublime – Southgate Tube Station
Nige admires the work of Charles Holden, the architect behind Southgate Tube Station, one of London’s finest Art Deco Underground stations… That is not a newly landed art deco UFO above – it is...
View Article
