TRAVELLING chef Philippa Davis spent Hallowe’en in Scotland where she swopped the spooky delights of pumpkin pie for the deeper and more complex seasonal flavours of a traditional breakfast. Guests on shooting parties in the Highlands usually expect a cooked breakfast, often a comprehensive menu including scrambled garden eggs, streaky bacon and avocado or black…
IF your dog has the misfortune to be allergic to fleas, it is hard to have any interest in the little beasts. But no-one could fail to be seduced by the charms of Karen Wimhurst’s musical flea and Frances Lynch’s interpretation of the scientist and entomologist Miriam Rothschild, who made a special study of the…
525,600 minutes, as a song from Rent points out, is a year, spent in the life of a New York community “celebrating life and facing death and AIDS at the turn of the century” to quote its writer Jonathan Larson. The show is a rock version of Puccini’s La Boheme, with most of the characters…
GEORGE Farquhar’s The Recruiting Officer was one of the first plays chosen by the newly-formed National Theatre 50 years ago, and clips from it have been popular highlights in the various television programmes about the anniversary, with Maggie Smith as the plucky Sylvia and Laurence Olivier as the braggart coward Brazen. The exposure should be…
TAKE a name like Francois Billetdoux and an image of famous actors Felicity Kendall and Simon Callow embracing, champagne flutes in hand, against a backdrop of Paris under blue skies, with the single word Chin-Chin, and you think you’re in for a frothy farce. There might be a clue to this extraordinary play, which first…
TALES of mythical gods and kings were regular subjects for the early composers, who, rather like journalists, never let the “facts” spoil a good story – though what was fact and what was fiction in the Greek Myths is open to endless academic debate. The excellent English Touring Opera company, this year accompanied by the…
IF Finea (The Lady of Little Sense) was a 20th century child she’d be diagnosed with behavioural issues, prescribed Ritalin and sent to a school for special needs. But, happily for the audience at Bath’s Ustinov Theatre, in Lope de Vega’s play, translated by David Johnston and directed by Laurence Boswell, she is leaping and…
FOOD awards proliferate, from broadcast media to local newspapers, but there are a handful that represent the zenith for food businesses, food and drink producers, restaurants, pubs, growers and retailers. They include the BBC Radio 4 Food Programme awards, the Guild of Fine Food’s Great Taste Awards, run from the Guild’s HQ in Gillingham, and…
TYNEHAM, Dorset’s famous ‘ghost village’ close to the coast in Purbeck, has been described as the community that died for D-Day. In November 1943 notice was given to the village’s 225 residents ordering them to leave within 28 days as the area was needed for forces’ training. On 17th December the last villagers left believing…
ONE of the joys of an English autumn is the game and we are lucky in the Wessex area with the number of excellent independent butchers and game specialists from whom we can buy local pheasants, partridge and venison. If you don’t have a good local specialist, ask at Somerset or Dorset Farmers Markets (see…