THE National Trust’s Holnicote estate on Exmoor was one of three finalists for this year’s UK River Prize awards, which are organised by the River Restoration Centre. The Trust’s pioneering project adopted an innovative American “Stage Zero” technique to restore a section of the River Aller creating new wetlands to benefit both people and wildlife….
I FREELY admit that I am a great fan of the wonderful BBC adaptation of Pride and Prejudice starring Jennifer Ehle and Colin Firth as Elizabeth Bennet and Fitzwilliam Darcy, and the shamefully underrated Benjamin Whitrow’s study of Mr Bennet. So when I first came across this spoof of Jane Austen’s novel, I arrived full…
TRAVELLERS have been writing about their journeys for millennia – the Greek writer and geographer Pausanias, born in 110AD in Asia Minor, a province of the Roman Empire, is generally considered to be the world’s first travel writer. His 21st century successors have trekked to the remotest locations, into rainforests, across the Antarctic, up the…
WE are quite used to opera singers taking a break after singing a strenuous role, but when two leading ladies are announced for a musical, you presume that they will alternate week by week during a year-long tour, which started earlier this month in Sunderland and ends on 4th April 2026 in Leeds. After watching…
PATRICK Hamilton’s Gaslight, first seen in 1938, has a long and powerful legacy, including a new word for the English language and legislation recognising the coercive control that is at the core of the play. Frome Drama has chosen it to launch the 2025 season, and their production at the Merlin is directed by Richard…
THE unusual pairing of saxophone – Canadian saxophonist David Zucchi – and accordion – Spanish accordionist Inigo Mikeleiz-Berrada – is featured in the April series of Concerts in the West, at Bridport, Ilminster and Crewkerne on Friday 11th and Saturday 12th. The London-based Mikeleiz-Zucchi Duo have won a number of awards including the Royal Overseas…
WATCHING this show was a little like eating a gourmet burger full of top class ingredients surrounded by a slightly stale, soggy bun. Under the watchful eye of director/choreographer Craig Revel Horwood, this production was slick and smooth-running, with a string of excellent individual performances and a mouthwatering selection of 20 or so expertly staged…
IN the years since Amanda Whittington’s play Be My Baby was first seen in Salisbury in 2004, there has been growing awareness of the misery and trauma caused to mothers and children by the estimated 215,000 “forced adoptions” over 30 years after the Second World War, and the increased popularity of TV shows and DNA…
FROME Drama Club has chosen Patrick Hamilton’s 1938 play Gas Light (two words in the original) for its Spring production, on at the Merlin Theatre from Thursday 3rd to Saturday 5th April. The thriller is set in 1880s London, and has given the word “gaslight” to the world to describe what is now known as…
THE Arborealists, a group of professional artists – painters, print-makers, photographers and sculptors, united by a love of trees – have their first Dorset exhibition at the Market Yard gallery at Sculpture by the Lakes, the atmospheric watery sculpture park near Tincleton, a few miles east of Dorchester, until 19th April. This is The Arborealists’…