All going well, boards nicely laid, so its onto the handrails.

I've bought handrails, baserails, spindles and fillets. I can put all
those together to give a nice effect, but then when I'm attaching the
handrail and baserail to the post all I can seem to come up with is to
use a couple of angled brackets. That doesn't sound particularly neat
to me - is that the usual way to do it?

Alternatives that come to mind a-
-Fit both ends of the handrail with dowels and plug into holes in the
posts. I can see that working, apart from having to wiggle the posts
wide enough to allow them all to fit, and the baserail isn't thick
enough to have dowels inserted.
-slice one of the spindles in half and attach that to the post. Use
this to conceal an angled bracket at the top and bottom (I quite like
this idea, but my wife says it sounds a bit mad and would look odd)

Any other good suggestions or pointers?

Thanks in advance!

Matt