THE award-winning FOLDE Dorset bookshop and gallery at the top of Gold Hill, Shaftesbury, has an impressive line-up of speakers for the autumn series of talks at the Grosvenor Arms. Next up is Tristan Gooley’s talk on 15th November, about his book How To Read a Tree is sold out, and there is a waiting…
IT seems hard to believe that it is ten years since the first performances of the Ridgeway Singers and Band, and the anniversary is being celebrated with a concert at Bridport on Sunday 29th October. The group’s concerts of traditional (and new) Dorset songs and tunes feels like an ancient part of the cultural fabric…
WELLS Festival of Literature was set up in 1992 to celebrate the written word and to promote the love of books and of reading throughout the community. More than 30 years on, the 2023 festival, from 27th October to 4th November, continues to fulfil that ambition, with writers from every sphere of life – politics,…
THIS year’s Bridport Literary Festival will run from 5th to 11th November, and the festival has launched a new bursary scheme to help local students planning to go to university. The BridLit bursary will make grants of £1,000 each to two successful candidates for each year of their three-year degree course, in any subject. Deirdre…
ATHELHAMPTON House, one of the country’s most beautiful Tudor manors, is a perfect setting for Passamezzo – A Handful of Pleasant Delights, a programme of music, words and song illustrating aspects of life in Elizabethan England, on 30th September at 7.30pm. The ancient house, with its beautiful garden and famous topiary trees, is on the…
A NEW documentary by Bridport-based photographer and film-maker Robert Golden is being shown at Bridport Arts Centre on Sunday 17th September, as part of this year’s International Day of Democracy events. The afternoon programme begins at 3.30pm with A Snapshort, an award-winning short film, funded by the British Film Institute, which explores the experience of…
THE summer exhibition at the Museum of Somerset at Taunton Castle until 28th August celebratess the work of Axel Scheffler, the UK’s number one illustrator, best known for his long partnership with children’s writer Julia Donaldson. With more than 150 books featuring his work, Axel has created some of the most instantly recognisable characters in…
WIMBORNE Community Theatre is looking for dancers, singers and musicians to take part in a site-specific performance at the Iron Age hillfort of Badbury Rings, on Cranborne Chase, between Wimborne and Blandford in late September. “Glow Badbury”’ organised by Emerald Ant in partnership with the National Trust, will involve visual artists and musicians in creating…
FROM wild geese to the night skies, Shaftesbury’s Folde nature and art bookshop, has lined up a fascinating series of writers’ talks for the spring and early summer, continuing with Taking Flight on Thursday 18th May. It will feature Lev Parikian talking about his new book, Taking Flight: The Evolutionary Story of Life on the…
THE 2023 annual Shaftesbury Abbey lecture on Thursday 27th April looks back to life in medieval convents, through the eyes of contemporary artists, when art historian, Dr John Renner, of the Courtauld Institute, gives an illustrated talk on Art in the Medieval Convent – the Pictorial Life of Nuns in Italy. The spring lecture takes…