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…
THOMAS Hardy was famously shy, even occasionally slipping out of the back door when people arrived at the front of Max Gate, his home in Dorchester. Now the National Trust has replanted part of a hedge in front of the house, which formerly shielded the writer from prying eyes. Ahead of Thomas Hardy’s birthday on…
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…
ONE of this country’s most distinguished and critically acclaimed actresses, Dame Harriet Walter is coming to the Marine Theatre, Lyme Regis, for a fund-raising evening on Sunday 14th June. A star of stage and screen for 40 years, Dame Harriet has a long and illustrious relationship with both the Royal Shakespeare Company and the National…
THERE is a concert with a difference at Lady St Mary Church at Wareham on 24th May, as part of this year’s Purbeck Art Weeks. The early music collective Parnassus Ensemble will be joined by artist Jeremy Queyras for a programme of cantatas by Pachelbel, Kuhnau and Bach, with the painter responding to the music…
IF you hear the name E Nesbit, you picture the cosy period charm of The Railway Children – but writing as Edith, Nesbit had a dark side, which is explored in an evening of horror story-telling at the Marine Theatre, Lyme Regis, on Friday 15th May at 7.30pm. Following the success of The Masks of…
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 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….
JANET Street-Porter is on a national tour, returning to our region on Wednesday 13th May for the final date of the tour at Plough Arts Centre, Torrington. She first hit the newspaper stands, and then the airwaves and television screens, there were many who didn’t like her accent, her voice or her take-no-prisoner attitudes. Opinionated…