THE versatile Swan Theatre company in Yeovil took a step into the unknown for their first show of 2018 – the first play written by local stalwart am dram soc member Adrian Harding, directed by fledgling director Judith Baker, with new members making their stage debuts. And it is a huge success. Whistleblower is set…
IN the first few days of 2014 , the eyes of the world focussed on North Somerset, where a number of remote villages were being engulfed by the rising water from the River Parrett and its tributaries and the courses that feed and underlie the Levels. Photographs and news footage of the floods brought aid…
IN 1977, folk singer Pete Bellamy, then a member of The Young Tradition, composed a cycle of folk ballads based on a true story of two petty criminals transported from Norwich Gaol to Botany Bay. It became The Transports, heralded as the first folk opera (presumably leaving The Beggar’s Opera aside) and the recording was and…
DO you remember the film The Vikings, starring a hyper-butch Kirk Douglas as the Viking leader and the gorgeous Tony Curtis as the scantily clad hero? OK, you’re showing your age – but you will remember the dramatic finale as Kirk Douglas’s character is sent off to the Norse after-life in traditional style, in a…
DISTINCTIVE patches of brown grass at Stonehenge stand out among the green fields but these areas will soon be richer in wild flowers, thanks to the addition of seeds collected from Salisbury Plain. It is more than 15 years since the start of one of Europe’s largest grassland restoration projects in the Stonehenge landscape. National…
WHAT would you do if you were given a diagnosis of Parkinson’s Disease? Be frightened … depressed … angry? Actress Sue Wylie was all of these – but after meeting an unusual young man who released his tensions with free-running, she turned her diagnosis into a play and now a film which is by turns…
WHAT a treat to see the person that Andrew Lloyd Webber chose to help workshop the material for this show over 25 years ago finally back in the leading role. It may have taken a few years for Ria Jones to play the part of Norma Desmond, but after showing just how good she was…
DISCOVER the story of one of the world’s great cheeses, when Devon-based Quicke’s opens its doors for a series of tours, monthly from April to September, at the farm that the Quicke family has nurtured for 14 generations. The tours will tell the often surprising story of what goes into a wedge, from the specially…
PHILIPPA Davis, the Shaftesbury-based private chef, is passionate about the food that is grown, produced and cooked in the various parts of the world that she visits. Towards the end of 2017, she was in Italy, and visited the San Miniato Truffle Festival as well as Pisa and Florence … “Darling, I am taking you…
WHEN she isn’t cooking for clients as far apart as the extreme north of Scotland and Singapore, Boston and Provence, Shaftesbury-based private chef Philippa Davis writes a regular column for The Field magazine and is constantly exploring new tastes and new products. Her travels may take her around the world, but her heart is firmly in…