THE Netflix hit Bridgerton had viewers round the world hooked on the roller-coaster love affair of beautiful Daphne Bridgerton and her dashing Duke. Many of the scenes were filmed in Bath, and this year’s Bath Festivals will include a walking tour of the locations. The Regency romp was a storming success with more than 82…
ACTOR Ronald Pickup, who has died at the age of 80 after a long illness, is now best known for his performances as Norman in The Best Marigold Hotel films and as the Archbishop of Canterbury in The Crown. But for those of us lucky enough to have been around for the early days of…
IF, like us, you love live performance, whether it is theatre or music, you will be desperately missing it, and looking forward to a time when we can once again sit in Bristol Old Vic or Bath Theatre Royal, Poole’s Lighthouse arts centre or Salisbury Playhouse. But while they remain closed in this interminable lockdown,…
LONGLEAT keepers are hoping love is in the ear for a pair of the world’s smallest foxes. These super-cute Fennec foxes, Anthony and Zuri, are part of an international breeding programme for the diminutive canines at the safari park. Reaching a maximum length of under 40 cms and weighing less than two kilogrammes, the fennec…
I LIKE to think I am pretty good at recycling plastic, avoiding buying things that are packaged or wrapped in plastic and reusing as much as I can. But then I look around the kitchen or even my desk and realise how difficult it is to avoid it. Pens, clip-top boxes, the computer mouse, light…
I WAS driving through nearby villages last week, and miserably missing all those posters advertising Aladdin, Sleeping Beauty, Jack and the Beanstalk, Dick Whittington (and of course Cinderella) that you’d expect to see taped to lamp-posts at this time of year. Covid-19 has scuppered all performances in early 2021, and those pantomimes have been a…
WE can’t travel to our favourite places, thanks to Covid-19, but we can still dream. Take a virtual tour of some of Europe’s most beautiful areas and finest vineyards, courtesy of Property Guides online, which has drawn up a list of ten top locations for wine. Stunning landscapes and fascinating history often go hand-in-hand with…
ALAN Bennett is the undoubted leader in the “talking heads” genre, and his famous monologues found a massive new audience in lockdown, performed by a new generation of actors. Of course it’s the perfect way for locked-down self-isolators to continue their thespian activities, and thanks to the fast-evolving technical developments, more or less anything is…
IN these dreadful days of mutating viruses, blocked seaports, blustering Brexit negotiators and tiered living, what we most need (apart from the certainty we can’t get) is laughter. And that’s just what Mischief Theatre is serving up on stage at Bath this Christmas. For reasons you can read elsewhere on the FTR, audiences are enjoying…
CBEEBIES original Chris Jarvis has been performing in professional pantomime since 1995, and for many years before that as an amateur. He was DETERMINED that the traditional Christmas entertainment would not be another thing to fall prey to the dreaded Covid-19, so he and a group of nine friends have devised and produced a panto…