PORTLAND, that mysterious, craggy, romantic island of rock that is barely attached to Dorset’s Jurassic Coast, is a constantly inspiring place for artists, and a new exhibition at the Drill Hall Gallery in Easton Lane and Tout Quarry Sculpture Park and Nature Reserve, explores the responses of a group of sculptors to its geology, history…
THERE is precious little good that came out of 9/11 – but one heart-warming, true story from those tragic, desperate days was turned into a great musical, Come From Away, which has been chosen by Yeovil Amateur Operatic Society for its autumn 2025 show, from 14th to 18th October at the Westlands entertainment centre. One…
THE October tour of Concerts in the West, at Bridport and Ilminster on Friday 24th October, and Crewkerne on Saturday 25th, brings the exciting female vocal trio Voice to the West Country with a programme that ranges from Hildegard of Bingen to new music by British composers. Victoria Couper, Clemmie Franks and Emily Burn will…
DORCHESTER Corn Exchange stands in for the Grand Ol’ Opry on Friday 3rd October, when Alan West and band come to town with A Country Music Songbook. The show is a celebration of country music – its history, its heroes and its enduring spirit. It is a richly woven journey through 100 years of country…
FROM a history of Afghanistan to new books inspired by Jane Austen, whose 250th anniversary is celebrated this year, Wells Festival of Literature’s 2025 line up is as exciting and eclectic as ever. Running from 17th to 25th October, the festival features some hot-off-the-press books, none more so than Entitled: The Rise and Fall of…
JAMES May, the television presenter who owns the Royal Oak pub in Swallowcliffe, between Shaftesbury and Salisbury, will be taking audiences through time and across thousands of miles in his new stage show, with October dates at Bath, Bristol and Southampton. The Top Gear and Grand Tour star is presenting a very different – and…
FOR many years, one of the great teats a group of us enjoyed was to go on Shrove Tuesday to a friend’s house to enjoy home-made pancakes. Good cook as she was, we were never offered the first pancake made, because she said it was never up to the standard of those that followed. Anyone…
LOVERS of early and baroque music are in for an absolute treat with the first Salisbury Musick early music festival, from 3rd to 5th October, at some beautiful and unusual venues, ranging from Fovant Chapel to Salisbury’s magnificent St Thomas’s Church. The new festival, which brings together many talented local musicians and some visiting professionals,…
WELSH storyteller Shon-Dale Jones is back on tour with a new show, Stories From An Invisible Town, with dates from 3rd October to 18th November across the south and west. Shôn is first and foremost a storyteller. He’s honest, inventive, and deeply human … curious, restless, wide-eyed, offbeat and resonant. His work combines heartfelt, funny…
CHARLOTTE Bronte’s Jane Eyre is one of the most famous, widely raid and critically acclaimed novels in the English language – it is also one of the most frequently adapted for stage and screen. A new play by Live Wire and Rough House theatre takes a different approach comes to the West Country on tour…
AN exhibition, at Somerset Rural Life Museum, Glastonbury, from 27th September to 10th January 2026, A Life Outside: Hope Bourne on Exmoor, offers a new appraisal of the work and life of the Exmoor writer and artist. Created in partnership with The Exmoor Society, which cares for The Hope L Bourne Collection, the exhibition considers…
WE live in a time of advertising slogans and clichés, like “bucket list” and “best self” and “soundtrack of our lives”, and it can be infuriating. But the last of those really can’t be better applied than the opening bars of Henry Wood’s Barwick Green – more familiarly known as The Archers theme. It is…
THERE was a world premiere at Strode Theatre in Street on Saturday, but one that arrived without fanfare and played out to a sadly small, but wildly enthusiastic audience. Baroque opera lends itself to fun interpretation, and for 40 years, ever since Nick Hytner’s indelible Xerxes at ENO, directors have included quirky elements to inventive…
WE all have our favourite shoes – they may be red carpet-worthy, six-inch high Jimmy Choos or comfortable if unglamorous Allbirds, but shoes follow the footprints of human history. Fashionable or functional, delicate or dependable, shoes are an essential part of our lives. And while other brands may come and go, one name remains proudly…
YEOVIL Town Council has launched a public consultation on funding support for the development and reopening of the currently closed Octagon. The town council wants residents to give their views on whether it should contribute £3,964,500 (including Stamp Duty) towards the future of one of Yeovil’s most significant cultural venues that helps to support the…
THE early years of the Second World War may have seemed an inappropriate time to stage a comedy about the ghosts of people recently dead, but Noel Coward was a shrewd man. When he wrote his great farce, Blithe Spirit, he reasoned that the story would be thoroughly heartless – “You can’t sympathise with any…
THE most popular films with Moviola audiences for October continue to be Mr Burton, the story of the young Richard Burton and his inspirational teacher (whose name he took), and The Penguin Lessons, with a third in-demand film, Steven Soderbergh’s Black Bag. This is a spy thriller, written by David Koepp, starring Cate Blanchett and…
GLOBAL Majority artists take centre stage at Poole’s Lighthouse arts centre throughout October in We Rise, a vibrant group exhibition showcasing award-winning and emerging artists across painting, printmaking, installation, textiles and sculpture. The exhibition is part of Black History Month 2025 and highlights the creativity and contribution of artists whose voices are often underrepresented in…
OSCAR-winning actor Ralph Fiennes completes his season of productions at the Theatre Royal Bath, starring in Small Hotel, by Rebecca Lenkiewicz and starring Ralph Fiennes, in its world premiere from Friday 3rd to Saturday 18th October. The cast also includes the acclaimed stage and screen actress Francesca Annis, Rosalind Eleazar and Rachel Tucker. Larry is…
BOURNEMOUTH Symphony Orchestra’s chief conductor Mark Wigglesworth will be conducting 22 performances across the new 2025-26 season, which takes the region’s major orchestra to venues in major towns and smaller centres including Bristol, Exeter, Sherborne and Taunton, as well as its home at Poole’s Lighthouse arts centre, where the season opens on Wednesday 1st October….
SINCE its first performances in 1957, in French and later in English, Samuel Beckett’s Endgame has been subjected to endless debate, interpretation and controversy, by academics, students, theatre-goers and critics. Regarded by many as the greatest work by the Irish Nobel literature laureate, the play was written while the writer lived in France, where the…
IF you are a fan of the wonderful Natalie Haynes and her standing up for the classic radio shows, the names Zeus, Hera, Aphrodite, Artemis, Apollo et al are probably familiar. This autumn, the West Country’s favourite comedy theatre company takes up the challenge … but have Living Spit bitten off more than they can…
THERE are often depressing reports of the declining numbers of children and young people who are reading books – but the popularity of the Bath Children’s Literature Festival, on until 5th October, does give ground for hope. There will be fierce competition for tickets to the amazing line-up of children’s authors and favourite illustrators and…