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…
EASY Bean, based on a farm in South Somerset, has launched a new “bean” inspired, gluten-free range this autumn. Company founder Christina Baskerville has added the new Chickpea Crispbreads to her pioneering range of one-pot meals which she launched six years ago. The Easy Bean mission is to produce tasty, healthy and convenient food that…
IF your idea of the perfect coffee house is a picturesque building, serving great coffee and cakes, where you can meet friends for a gossip or just sit undisturbed reading a book or the paper – or even watching the world go by, drop into Divine Wines at Wincanton. It is very much a European…
OUR passion for the Tudors continues unabated, with films, television dramas, historical novels – plus stage adaptations of Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies for the Royal Shakespeare Company at the end of this year – and now Bournemouth Gilbert and Sullivan Society joins the merry Tudor dance with The Yeomen of the Guard,…
I HAVE seen Dramatic Productions in an enchanting children’s story, a polished and entertaining Ayckbourn, an unforgettable Of Mice and Men and now a new show that I hope to forget as soon as possible. It is Bournemouth University tutor John Foster’s retelling of Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, on at Poole Lighthouse…
DIVORCED, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, survived, is a well known mnemonic to remember the fate of the Six Wives of Henry the Eighth, all brought to life on screen by Keith Michell et al on the BBC in the 1970s, more recently by Jonathan Rhys Meyers and cast in The Tudors , and for those…
MEREDITH Oakes’ intense and poetic translation of Lope de Vega’s El Castigo Sin Venganza takes its place in the trio of plays that makes up the Spanish Golden Age season at Bath’s Ustinov Studio until 21st December, adding the dark shadows to the comedy of Tirso de Molina’s romp. You might guess from the title…
TIRSO de Molina’s hilarious 1615 play Don Gil de las Calzaz Verdes is one of three plays from the Spanish Golden Age on stage in repertory at Bath’s Ustinov Theatre until 21st December. The writer’s real name was Gabriel Tellez, and he was a monk, one of those sent to the New World to Santo…