Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 393):
This is a more restricted type in which the Head is almost always an attitudinal noun embodying some positive or more usually negative appraisal. This appraisal may be extended prosodically by adjectives modifying the attitudinal noun. For example:I met this feisty, wonderful, paradoxical genius of a woman that I’m nuts about …
The Chronicle called it ‘a beached whale of a building’.
he has apparently been an absolute nightmare of a client
that some thieving bastard of a cop had walked off with his cigarettes
I had been dragging and pulling and tugging my stupid fool of a brother all the while