'Some Mungril Italian Poet' - or; How To Write A Pasticcio

Pick out about an hundred Italian Airs from several Authors, good, or bad, it signifies nothing. Among these, make use of fifty five, or fifty six, of such as please your Fancy best, and Marshall ’em in the manner you think most convenient. When this is done, you must employ a Poet to write some English Words, the Airs of which are to be adapted to the Italian Musick. In the next place you must agree with some Composer to provide the Recitative … When this is done, you must make a Bargain with some Mungril Italian Poet to Translate the Part of the English that is to be Perform’d in Italian; and then deliver it into the Hands of some Amanuensis, that understands Musick better than your self, to Transcribe the Score, and the Parts. 

- via Alexandra Coghlan, in The Spectator

Surely not...?!

The heirs of Bomber Harris are not squeamish about the far end of a bomb site...

- Simon Jenkins, in The Spectator

Fair dos to Facebook

Mark Zuckerberg has started a book club, and the publishers are running out of nominated books already.

Books I've actually finished lately: 61

As inscribed by Dominic Scott Hilton, from his death-bed:

For the lowest life of them all. 

Love,
YOUR MUM's lover 

Wellington Hospital 25.11.14

Reem

Dot Wordsworth asks if Joey Essex knows what 'reem' means.

Five pounds right here says he doesn't.

(Soldiers know what 'to ream' (sic) means. They even have a tool for it. Ahem.)

Spectator 'Books of the Year'

or; How to Blog, by Jeremy Clarke.

'Hugo Rifkind is a writer for the Times'

it declaims in his Spectator byline.

I wonder what it says in The Times.

On derivative non-fiction

the long trails of 'ibids'...

- David Crane reviews The Ariadne Objective in The Spectator

Magnificent valour!

Truly splendid biog

Crispian Jago writes the 2011 Orwell Prize Longlisted blog, Science, Reason and Critical Thinking where he waves a shitty stick in the general direction of Irrational Nonsense. He is the vice president of the Hampshire Skeptics Society and co-convenor of Winchester Skeptics in the Pub. He is a compulsive record collector and when he doesn't have any spare time, he's a Freelance IT consultant.

as found attached to this article, from the Spectator.

Ralph Fiennes dissects the meaning of drama

I feel [Coriolanus] is like some magnificent beast or animal; like a horse that has always been trained to be this pure thing. Then suddenly the trainer — his mother — turns around and says, “Can you actually be this entirely other thing?” So he tries but then suddenly it all fucks up and goes crazy.

- Ralph Fiennes, interviewed in The Spectator

'Royd rage

And what am I most proud of having achieved in these eight years? I am proud never to have used the word 'movie', and of never having had a quotation from one of my reviews used to adorn a cinema advertisement. Goodbye.

- Peter Ackroyd signs off as film critic of the Spectator, 1987