teapots teapots teapots (Free subscription) | 07/21/2008
This exhibition, taking place in the Dictionary Garret at Dr Johnson’s House, 17 Gough Square from 26th September to 13th December 2008 explores the culture of both drinks in the life of Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) and his contemporaries. Contemporary prints, essays, tea and coffee equipages and ephemera will also be on display giving a rewarding and insightful slice of the complex...
faith in honest doubt (Free subscription) | 6 hours ago
Samuel Johnson is one of the fathers of blogging; The Rambler never quite reached the hit rate he hoped for, and while it's rare to find a blog that doesn't issue this lament in some form, I'm tempted to say Johnson's elevated style is no longer possible: But, though it should happen that an author is capable of excelling, yet his merit may pass without notice, huddled in the variety...
The Joy of Curmudgeonry (Free subscription) | yesterday
“A wicked fellow is the most pious when he takes to it. He’ll beat you all at piety.” ..... Samuel Johnson, as quoted by James Boswell, 10th June 1784, Life of Johnson , ed., R.W. Chapman (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), p.1289.
The Rap Sheet (Free subscription) | 07/23/2008
• Using as his jumping-off point Kate Summerscale’s Samuel Johnson Prize-winning book, The Suspicions of Mr. Whicker: A Shocking Murder and the Undoing of a Great Detective, Ben Macintyre contributes to the London Times a fine essay that sees in that 1860s real-life crime and the publicity surrounding it the roots of modern detective fiction, “the quintessential British literary genre.”...
The Telegraph (Free subscription) | 07/21/2008
... can be little doubt that in choosing as the winner of Britain's biggest non-fiction prize, the Samuel Johnson judges last week made a brilliant decision.Because, however strong the shortlist, this has to be one of the most original works of recent years. It feels like a book that was waiting for the perfect author to come along.Summerscale found her subject in an 1890s anthology of...
The Guardian (Free subscription) | 07/20/2008
Curtains for Samuel? | In bed with the Archbish
PETRONA (Free subscription) | 07/20/2008
It was quite appropriate, I suppose, that in the train on the way to the Harrogate crime writing festival, I read an article in the Times It's no mystery why we love detective stories .The hook for the piece was the recent award of the Samuel Johnson prize for non-fiction to Kate Summerscale for The Suspicions of Mr Whicher (and not, as was widely expected among the so-called literati,...
The Blog Herald (Free subscription) | 07/20/2008
... his creator. John Bright He is not only dull himself; he is the cause of dullness in others. Samuel Johnson He is simply a shiver looking for a spine to run up. Paul Keating He had delusions of adequacy. Walter Kerr Why do you sit there looking like an envelope without any address on it? Mark Twain His mother should have thrown him away and kept the stork. Mae West Some cause happiness...
Upper Left (Free subscription) | 07/18/2008
…an amusement courtesy of Meteor Blades . Samuel Johnson famously wrote in 1775 that "Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel." In The Devil’s Dictionary, Ambrose Bierce made the appropriate correction: "With all due respect to an enlightened but inferior lexicographer I beg to submit that it is the first." Heh™
The Herald (Free subscription) | 07/18/2008
... Dames and Kurosawa's High and Low, and there will also be a showing of a film adaptation of Samuel Johnson's travelogue A Journey to the Western Isles starring Robbie Coltraine as Dr Johnson and John Sessions as his biographer, James Boswell.The film, described as a "neglected comic classic", was made by John Byrne, the Scottish writer and artist who is also Swinton's partner.David...
Times Online - Alan Coren (Free subscription) | 07/18/2008
The detective novel is the quintessential British literary genre, embodying two of our most cherished national characteristics: a faith in reason and a suspicion that our neighbours, respectable as they may seem, are no better than they should be. These twin aspects are wonderfully evoked in Kate Summerscale's The Suspicions of Mr Whicher, deserved winner of this year's Samuel Johnson...
