WHAT links the Titanic, Pompeii, Neolithic cave painting, Victorian perfumes, Mary Queen of Scots, scalping, Nelson, Proust, Hiroshima, slavery, Darwin, Shakespeare, mutiny, chimneys, a skull, a 17th century map of the world, shoes and gloves? Head for Yeovil on Saturday 27th October and Dorchester on Sunday 4th November to find out. Everything has a history….
BATH Children’s Literature Festival served up 10 days of world-class literary events with some of the country’s most popular and critically acclaimed authors and illustrators visiting the city. Bath is now the largest dedicated children’s literature festival in Europe. The festival opened with Waterstone’s Children’s Laureate, Lauren Child, author and illustrator of the hugely popular…
TOWNSEND Productions is back in Dorset from 30th November to 2nd December with a new one-man performance, The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists Magic Lantern Show, based on Robert Tressell’s classic novel of working class poverty. Actor Neil Gore presents the story as an Edwardian Magic Show, using magic lantern, projected animation, political conjuring tricks, live music…
TELEVISION presenter and award-winning garden and landscape designer Adam Frost will be at Brimsmore Gardens, Yeovil, on Monday 22nd October at 7pm, as part of this year’s Yeovil Literary Festival. Adam, who has amassed seven RHS Chelsea Flower Show gold medals for his work since 2007, will share his vast knowledge and experience with a…
THE acclaimed biographer and novelist Victoria Glendinning is on home ground in more ways than one on Thursday 18th October when she comes to At The Chapel to give a talk about her new book. Glendinning, whose books include biographies of Leonard Woolf, Rebecca West, Jonathan Swift and the legendary Raffles of Singapore, returns to…
FORMER England cricket captain Mike Brearley is coming to this year’s Wells Festival of Literature, replacing Lady Antonia Fraser who has had to pull out of her event, the Literary Lunch, on Friday 26th October. It is a welcome return to Wells for the famous cricketer who gave an entertaining talk in 2017 on the…
THE National Trust has put a poetic spin on the annual pumpkin display at the Victorian estate of Tyntesfield, near Bristol – each year, the garden team creates a display of the pumpkins, squashes and gourds grown in the Kitchen Garden and this year’s theme is poetry. Visitors to the 2017 display will remember the…
THE life of a gypsy poet – the most famous Romani poet ever – is portrayed in Papusza, a film being shown at the Digby Church Hall in Sherborne on Wednesday 24th October. Bronislawa Wajs (1908-1987) was a Polish-Romani classic poet and singer, who was usually known by her Romani name Papusza. She grew up nomadically…
JENNIFER Coombs, a former High Sheriff of Dorset, comes to Tollard Talks in the barn at Tollard House, Tollard Royal, on Thursday 18th October, to give a talk called From High Sheriff to High Seas. At the beginning of this year Jennifer made a six-week, 6,500km sailing trip across the wild, windswept South Atlantic to…
NICK Harper, dubbed the Bard of Wiltshire by Mojo magazine and “Betjeman with a guitar” by Guitarist magazine, brings his epic poem with music, A Wiltshire Tale, to the Sherling Studio at Poole’s Lighthouse centre for the arts on Thursday 11th October. Written and performed by Nick Harper, A Wiltshire Tale is a journey through…