TICKETS are now on sale for Dorchester Literature Festival, running from 17th to 21st October, with a fascinating line-up that includes novelist Joanna Trollope, foreign correspondent Mark Austin (who started his journalistic career on the Bournemouth Echo), Judy Murray, tennis coach, adviser and mother of Andy and Jamie, and politician Vince Cable. With other big…
BOAT-builder Gail McGarva, who is coming to Messums Wiltshire on Bank Holiday Monday 27th August, at 11am, for a free talk, has an extraordinary story, a journey that began in 2004 when at the age of 39 she left her career as a sign language interpreter and went to train at the Lyme Regis Boat…
A PERFORMANCE poet whose work is praised by composer Philip Glass is coming to the Marine Theatre at Lyme Regis to share a stage with veteran rockers Dr Feelgood, on Friday 3rd August. Mike Garry, who has collaborated with New Order at Carnegie Hall, will be in Lyme Regis as part of a super-weekend that…
A SPECIAL shuttle bus service is being provided from Dorchester’s new Shire Hall Historic Courthouse Museum to the Tolpuddle Martyrs Festival on Saturday 21st July. The bus link will bring one of the most significant events in Dorset – and national – together, taking people to the home village of the pioneers of the trade…
A NIGHT to Celebrate Israel will be held in the Concert Hall at Poole’s Lighthouse on Wednesday 18th July. Moved from the Theatre because of flood damage, the event includes music, dance and speakers, and starts at 7pm. For more details, contact the venue.
BUDDING writers are invited to get free help with their work at the first creative cafe at Dorchester’s Shire Hall Historic Courthouse Museum. Prize-winning writer of short fiction and poetry Gail Aldwin will be holding a free session for creative writers at the café on 18th July from 11am-3pm. Writers will be able to drop…
STEVE Knightley and Billy Bragg are among the musicians performing at this year’s Tolpuddle Martyrs Festival, from 20th to 22nd July this year, a little later than usual to avoid a clash with the Durham Miners Gala. The programme is the familiar mixture of talks, radical films, comedy, workshops, and music. Other performers include Captain…
AN academic more used to digging up the bones of the past has turned her forensic skills on the more recent past for her first crime novel, which was launched with a book reading at Cobblestones books in Avebury. The Hidden Bones is the enigmatic title of the debut crime novel by Nicola Ford, the…
MARK Twain’s satirical King Leopold’s Soliloquy, published in 1905, will be performed on 10th July as part of the 2018 Frome Festival. It celebrates the definitive role played by Alice Seeley Harris, a missionary from Frome, in the unmasking of a reign of terror in the Belgian Congo. Under the title of The Meddling of…
THOMAS Hardy’s relationship with the remarkable Thornycroft family is told through readings from letters, diaries and other writings for a joint event of Dorchester Arts with the Thomas Hardy Society, at Dorchester Corn Exchange on Monday 16th July. Hardy’s relationship with the notable Thornycroft famly stretched through the generations from his friendship with the sculptor Hamo…