On October 4, 2025, Ruth Leon—a sharp-eyed cultural commentator and regular columnist for Slippedisc—published a quietly powerful recommendation tying the legendary Dame Judith Olivia Dench to the 137th anniversary of Edward Lear’s death. It wasn’t a grand spectacle. No stage premiere. No newly released recording. Just a thoughtful nudge from one art lover to another, framed by history, wit, and the enduring resonance of nonsense.

The Quiet Power of a Nonsense Anniversary

Edward Lear died on January 29, 1888, in San Remo, Italy, leaving behind a legacy of limericks, absurd landscapes, and the kind of poetic whimsy that still tickles the brain long after you’ve read it. His most famous lines—"There was an Old Man with a beard" or "The Owl and the Pussycat went to sea"—aren’t just children’s verses. They’re linguistic acrobatics, linguistic jokes disguised as nursery rhymes. And in 2025, exactly 137 years later, Ruth Leon didn’t just mention Lear’s name. She used his ghost as a lens.

Why Dench? The article doesn’t spell it out. But here’s the twist: you don’t need a direct performance to make the connection. Dench, at 90, has spent seven decades embodying characters who speak in layers—witty, wounded, wise, and sometimes delightfully mad. Think of her as Lady Bracknell in The Importance of Being Earnest, or as the razor-sharp M in the James Bond films. She doesn’t just deliver lines. She makes silence meaningful. She makes absurdity feel human.

Lear’s nonsense isn’t random. It’s controlled chaos. And Dench? She’s mastered that art.

A History of Recognition

This isn’t Leon’s first time spotlighting Dench. Back in March 2022, she wrote about a National Theatre Platform interview where Dench, then 87, was described as “acerbic, witty, down-to-earth and often side-splittingly funny.” That phrase stuck. It wasn’t flattery—it was precision. Dench doesn’t perform humility. She lives it. And when she talks about Shakespeare, or Alzheimer’s, or the cost of fame, you lean in. Not because she’s famous—but because she’s real.

That interview, which Leon recommended, touched on Dench’s role in Elegy for Iris (1999), where she portrayed novelist Iris Murdoch in the final, heartbreaking years of her battle with dementia. Murdoch, who wrote all her novels in longhand—twice—and delivered manuscripts in plastic bags because she refused editorial interference, was a writer who understood the fragility of language. So was Lear. So is Dench.

Dench’s own book, Shakespeare: The Man Who Pays the Rent, isn’t just a memoir. It’s a love letter to the discipline of performance. And her voice in the radio adaptation of Amanda Foreman’s biography Georgiana: Duchess of Devonshire—aired by the Park Avenue Armory in 2024—is a masterclass in tonal nuance. You hear the aristocracy, the loneliness, the wit. All in one breath.

Who Is Slippedisc, and Why Does It Matter?

Slippedisc, edited by the incisive Norman Lebrecht, isn’t your average arts blog. It’s a place where classical music scandals, forgotten composers, and cultural echoes get the attention they deserve. The day before Leon’s piece, Lebrecht published a provocative essay titled “Germans sing Hebrew better than most”—a typical example of the site’s fearless, curious tone.

Leon’s column, “Ruth Leon recommends,” is a quiet counterpoint. No headlines. No clickbait. Just a recommendation, often obscure, always thoughtful. She doesn’t chase trends. She follows threads. And this time, she pulled one from 1888 to 2025, linking two artists who never met but whose work hums in the same key: one who wrote nonsense to survive grief, the other who speaks nonsense to reveal truth.

Why This Matters Now

We live in an age of algorithm-driven content. Everything must be loud, viral, immediate. But Leon’s piece is a quiet rebellion. It reminds us that art doesn’t need a premiere to matter. It doesn’t need a trailer or a TikTok trend. Sometimes, it just needs someone to say: “Remember this?”

Dench, still working, still speaking, still choosing roles that unsettle and uplift, represents a generation of performers who treated craft as sacred. Lear, a man who turned melancholy into limericks, turned pain into poetry. And now, in a world where so much feels rushed and shallow, Leon asks us to pause. To reread. To listen.

There’s no official event tied to this anniversary. No concert. No exhibit. But maybe that’s the point. The connection isn’t in the spectacle—it’s in the silence between the words.

What’s Next?

Will Dench record a reading of Lear’s limericks? Will a theater company stage a tribute? The sources don’t say. But if history is any guide, Dench doesn’t wait for invitations. She finds the spaces where art needs her—and fills them.

Meanwhile, Slippedisc continues its quiet work. And Ruth Leon? She’s already working on her next recommendation. You can bet it’ll be unexpected. And you can bet it’ll be worth your time.