AUDIENCES at Iford Opera in 2018 arrived to find parts of the Manor gardens cordoned off and obvious signs of film crews in the narrow lanes, but curiosity was met with stony, and contractual, silence. Iford Manor owners, staff and all those involved with the festival were sworn to secrecy, and it was only later…
RURAL media charity Windrose Trust has a new website – windroseruralmedia.org – where you can view old film, listen to audio and order DVDs. All Windrose’s projects were cancelled or postponed because of the pandemic, but a grant from the National Lottery Heritage Fund has enabled the charity, which was set up in 1984 under…
SEVEN months ago, en route to Bath Theatre Royal to review Band of Gold and New Old Friends, we were telephoned with the news that the theatre had closed until further notice following government instructions. What an exciting relief to be back, albeit masked and distanced, in the beautiful theatre for the first of three…
TEN years of planning and maturing in the barrels have come to fruition with the release of Dartmoor Whisky, the ideal Christmas gift for any fan of single malt. Distilled and aged in the West Country’s first whisky distillery, at the gateway to Dartmoor the former in Bovey Tracey Town Hall, this whisky is firmly…
DEVON-based farmhouse cheesemaker Quicke’s has unveiled the line-up for its first ever British Farmstead Cheese Board, hand-picked to be at their best during the Christmas festivities. Partnering with other artisan cheesemakers across the region, who craft their cheeses from milk produced within metres of the dairy, Mary Quicke has curated a winter cheese selection that…
SOUTH Somerset District Council is working with organisations including the Bumble Bee Conservation Trust to save the rare Shrill Carder bee. The council’s team at Ham Hill Country Park has started habitat management to encourage the bees to recolonise from an existing population nearby. The work is centred around the hay meadows in the flat…
THE Cleveland Pools Trust, which looks after Bath’s 200 year-old open-air lido, has been granted £56,300 by the National Lottery Heritage Fund to assist with the impact the Covid-19 pandemic has had on the development of the development project. The pandemic and lockdown forced the trust team to adapt to home working. Various community plans…
WHAT more apt venue for cycling theatricals The Handlebards than the home of Moulton Cycles in Bradford-on-Avon? And what lovelier setting to watch a hilarious three-wheeled version of Romeo and Juliet on the night before the imposition of Boris’s latest three-word slogan, the Rule of Six? The company usually tours in two groups, boys and…
SAMUEL Beckett, according to the Amateur Players of Sherborne programme, wrote “Art has nothing to do with clarity, does not dabble in the clear and does not make clear,” … and there’s me thinking that the present government doesn’t understand The Arts. Sherborne’s open air production of Beckett’s masterpiece was the result of a happenstance…
WITH the ten minutes notice in which our leaders specialise, the intrepid alfresco theatre companies of England were told that they could go ahead with outdoor performances. Illyria was one of the first four to take up the challenge, creating a Covid-secure bubble in which to tour a delightful, satirical, hilarious three-person retelling of Kenneth…