THERE couldn’t have been a more evocative and beautiful place to experience Wassail Theatre’s Whispering Willows, than Coates English Willow at Stoke St Gregory, below a hillside woodland overlooking the green, lark-punctuated fields of willow towards the M5 in the distance. The wordless show, devised by the company and directed by Jesse Briton, tells a…
TIME fascinates us. It has fascinated philosophers and scientists, mathematicians, poets and playwrights for centuries. It particularly fascinated the poet and Nobel laureate TS Eliot – and nowhere was that fascination more powerfully expressed than in Four Quartets. Everything about this masterpiece in four movements is preoccupied with time – “Time present and time past…
THE Global Cheese Awards, part of the annual Frome Agricultural and Cheese Show, which has been held every year since 1861 (apart from 2020), will be back, on 11th September, with a new cheese section aimed specifically at artisan producers. The pandemic stopped both the show and the Global Cheese Awards as well as damaging…
A NEW European-style cheese, La Fresca Margarita, made at Feltham’s Farm near Wincanton, has won Best British Cheese at the Virtual Cheese Awards 2021 For cheese-maker Marcus Fergusson, it was his second year as supreme champion, following the success of his Renegade Monk as the best British cheese in the first Virtual Cheese Awards in…
A NEW competition to find the Affineur of the Year competition has been launched by Devon-based cheesemaker, Quicke’s, and the Academy of Cheese, to help celebrate the age-old art of maturing cheese and guiding it to its full potential. Eight three-month matured 27kg truckles of Quicke’s cheddar are now in place at maturing rooms across…
JACK the Treacle Eater, one of Yeovil’s legendary characters, is famed for running long distances at high speed and fuelling himself with treacle. But in the Yeovil College end of year show for performing arts students, that fuel was friendship. It must have been a horrendous year for students, with classes happening and then not…
GATHERING together in Bath for the annual festival had a uniquely poignant atmosphere, enhanced by the ancient setting of the Roman Baths, when the Gesualdo Six sang a programme of 14 songs with a watery theme last night. After months of lock-downs and cancellations, the joy of live performance was shared equally by the singers…
MARSH samphire – sometimes known as “the mermaid’s kiss” – has been making its salty, crunchy presence felt on restaurant and domestic tables in recent years, and now you can grow your own seashore delicacy, thanks to Wincanton-based Somerset Samphire. Samphire is already a native of Somerset, loving the salt marshes, where local farmers also…
AS restaurants, pubs and other hospitality businesses in Devon open their doors again, the county’s food group, Food Drink Devon, has announced the support off wine buff and television personality Oz Clarke, and a new video and website. Award-winning chef Peter Gorton (pictured), a recently appointed Food Drink Devon board member, says: “It has been…
ONE of the most beautiful gardens in the West Country, Springhead at Fontmell Magna in North Dorset, is open over the May Day bank holiday weekend for visitors to admire the blossom. The gardens will be open on Sunday 2nd May and Monday 3rd, from 11.30am to 4.30pm. There is no charge, but donations are…