IT is hard to believe it is 30 years since the first Purbeck Film Festival, but in those three decades the rural celebration of film has become one of the country’s most interesting and varied events, this year running from 16th October to 1st November, with an astonishing mix of classic, recent and new releases….
WELLS Festival of Literature returns for its 35th year, following last year’s most successful event, with a packed programme of talks and book-related events at Cedars Hall, from Friday 16th October to Saturday 24th October. From popular novelists to leading journalists, including Jonathan Dimbleby, historians, cultural commentators, archaeologists, biographers, activists and campaigners, the 2026 Wells…
BATH Children’s Literature Festival continues until Sunday 4th October, with a packed programme that ranges from a free Party at the Holburne Museum to a chance to discover the latest How to Train your Dragon adventure. Among the leading children’s writers (and illustrators) taking part will be Katherine Rundell, Michael Rosen and MC Grammar, Dame Julia…
WHEN the great Martin Carthy unexpectedly retired, as he was due to go on tour with his daughter Eliza, she decided to continue the tour as a tribute to her father, and will be one of the major draws at this year’s Lyme Regis Folk Weekend, from Friday 28th to Sunday 30th August. Eliza Carthy…
PURBECK, with its dramatic coastline, is inextricably linked to the sea, and this is the theme of this year’s Purbeck International Chamber Music Festival, from 3rd to 6th September. Artistic director, and internationally acclaimed cellist, Natalie Clein has chosen this theme because the sea connects and separates, carries memory and myth, and reflects the depths…
JURASSIC Fields, a feel-good family festival billed as the “the jewel in the crown of a West Dorset summer of sounds,” returns to West Bay for a packed weekend of great music and food, from 14th to 16th August. With camping right next door to the West Bay Fields festival site, just a short walk…
BURTON Bradstock’s arts festival is renowned for the wide spectrum of music played by ensembles and soloists, led by violinist and artistic director David Juritz, alongside an exhibition of West Country arts, ceramics and crafts in the historic village hall. This year’s 44th annual festival runs from 15th to 23rd August. The majority of the…
THE third summer rep season at the Marine Theatre, Lyme Regis, begins on Thursday 23rd July, with the thriller The Late Edwina Black. Meanwhile, about 25 miles west along the Jurassic Coast, Sidmouth’s Manor Pavilion Theatre is already well into its three-month summer season. The repertory theatre programme, often in a seaside theatre, used to…
COVENT Garden Dance this year celebrates its 20th anniversary of presenting world-class ballet and dance. Since 2009 it has produced Ballet Under the Stars, the “Glyndebourne of dance”, a highly anticipated date in the south Wiltshire calendar, in the beautiful 17th century Dutch walled garden at Hatch House near Tisbury. This year’s Ballet at Hatch,…
THE 2026 Dorset Opera Festival brings one of the great tragic dramas of the repertoire to the stage of the Coade Hall at Bryanston School, and the return of a favourite comic opera from 21st to 25th July. There are performances of Saint-Saens’ Samson et Dalila on Wednesday 22nd and Thursday 23rd at 7pm, and…