POETRY lecturer Graham Fawcett returns to Sladers Yard at West Bay on Thursday 29th June at 6.30pm for an evening of readings and a talk about the American poet Walt Whitman. Graham Fawcett is a popular lecturer and workshop leader at literary festivals and events throughout Britain and is a regular visitor to Sladers Yard….
YOU don’t have to trek up the long miles of the M6 or A1 to get to Edinburgh this summer – the Fringe is coming to you, at Shaftesbury with three days of free fun from Friday 30th June to Sunday 2nd July. Building on the success of last year’s inaugural Shaftesbury Fringe, this year’s event…
BEAMINSTER Festival director Nigel Corbett has created a delightfully diverse and musically exciting programme for this year’s festival, fromn 24th June to 3rd July. Listing some of the 2017 highlights – from the Brodsky Quartet to Red Priest, pianist Tom Poster to novelist Joanna Trollope, the Bash Street Theatre, the Festival Players, Pasadena Roof Orchestra…
MANY people interested in the history of the Second World War are familiar with the stories of the Baltic and Arctic Convoys, the D-Day landings and the shock for families who were evacuated from their homes as the army took over their villages for battle training. But one story from the Arctic Convoys is less…
JOHN Blashford-Snell has led a life that reads like a Boy’s Own story – exploring African rivers, South American jungles and Himalayan mountains, and founding one of the world’s leading adventure programmes for young people. Col Blashford-Snell, who lives near Shaftesbury, will be at the Electric Palace at Bridport on Saturday 17th June, at 7.30pm, to…
PERFORMANCE poet Luke Wright brings a show based on his new collection, The Toll, to Dorset in June, with gigs at Poole’s Lighthouse Arts Centre on Friday 16th, and on 30th at Bridport Arts Centre. One of the country’s most popular and accessible poets, this tour sees Luke Wright returning to his performing roots. The…
THOUSANDS of community energy projects have been started in the UK since 2008, many of them in the West Country – and they are not just a response to environmental concerns and a desire to save money. Gordon Cowtan, a co-founder of a project near Glasgow, has written Community Energy: A Guide to Community-Based Renewable Energy Projects,…
A LEADING contemporary composer, Sir Harrison Birtwistle, and Plush Festival artistic director and cellist Adrian Brendel have collaborated for this year’s festival to create “our most ambitious programme to date.” The summer series of classical, contemporary and jazz events in the little church in the perfect setting of Plush Manor in the heart of Dorset,…
ILMINSTER held its first literary festival in 2016 and the event was such a success that a second festival has been organised, with speakers from many aspects of the writing world at venues around the town, until Thursday 8th June. Val Keitch, the Mayor of Ilminster, says in her introduction that literature is important in…
CHALKE Valley History Festival is nothing if not eclectic – this year “the best history festival” (as Dan Snow calls it) has subjects that range as widely as the 50th anniversary of Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, the relationship between the people and the sheep on the Cumbrian fells and the life of a war…