JULIUS Caesar is centre stage at Grange Opera Festival, where Sarah Brady (pictured) captures the magnetic power of Cleopatra. Christian Curnyn, well-known to local opera lovers from the former Iford Opera Festival (near Bath), conducts his Early Opera Company to accompany the singers, led by countertenor Tim Mead, as Caesar. One of Handel’s most popular…
CHALKE History Festival, the UK’s leading celebration of history, will return from 22nd to 28th June to bring the past vividly to life through a rich programme of top-class talks, wide-ranging discussions and dynamic living history experiences. The line-up includes classicist Mary Beard, radio presenter and journalist James Naughtie, commentator Anne Applebaum, former White House…
THE Irish seem to have a closer relationship with the mystical, the spiritual … the “other side” than many nations. All the Celtic peoples have their mystical side but the Irish have held on to their mythology more, perhaps because the Romans never conquered them. Maggie O’Farrell was born in Coleraine, in Co Londonderry, and…
WITH each day and each latest horrifying news item, the war in the Middle East becomes more worrying and spreads ever further. It is, for those who take the “long view” as Jonathan Freedland calls it in his BBC Radio 4 programmes, a war that was always on the cards, in a region that has…
SIXTEEN days of visual arts celebration, exploring the galleries, studios and arts centres of Dorset, begins with the return of the biennial Dorset Art Weeks, this year from 23rd May to 7th June. More than 290 venues, from Highcliffe to Monkton Wykd, will have work by painters, potters, printmakers, photographers, sculptors, textile artists, makers and…
BATH Literature Festival has a powerful programme with thoughtful speakers tackling a vast range of subjects from the big issues of the day to characters from ancient myths. This year’s festival runs from Saturday 16th to Sunday 24th May, and brings some of today’s leading writers to the city. Along with the bestsellers and the…
BATH’s Party in the City, the opening night of the flour weeks of Bath Festivals, on Friday 15th May from 5pm, is the biggest free multi-venue event in the south west, attracting thousands of music lovers to enjoy live music in 50 venues, including the city’s leading music venues, as well as pubs, clubs, churches,…
BATH Literature Festival has announced its first event, a pre-festival evening with historian Tom Holland, co-host of the hit podcast The Rest is History, at Bath Forum on Friday 22nd May at 7pm. Travel back to the Roman Empire as Tom Holland celebrates his translation for Penguin Classics of Suetonius’s influential Lives of the Twelve Caesars….
BRIDPORT’s unique film festival, From Page to Screen runs until 26th April, with screenings and talks at Bridport Arts Centre and the Electric Palace. The programme includes several films which share a focus on space exploration in fact and fiction, looking into the future and at the reality of space travel. This theme includes a…
BRIDPORT’s atmospheric Electric Palace continues a season celebrating a centenary of cinema on Thursday 30th April, musician and film historian Neil Brand marks the centenary of Laurel and Hardy’s 1926 movie debut, 45 Minutes from Hollywood – the following year they became an official comedy partnership.