VAN Gogh’S Wheat Field with Cypresses positively sings of late summer – an appropriate image for a concert that celebrates the season. To the Idle Hill of Summer: Memories of the Season will be performed by pianist Clare Sydenham, with narrator David Hindley, at St Mary’s Church, Bruton, on Sunday 21st September at 3pm. The…
COVID changed many lives, not least for Ros Huxley, who quit her full time work to write, after many years in the creative industries and latterly as a charity fund-raiser. After writing several short stories, she has now published her first novel, Kendal Acts Up, the story of an unusual woman who pretends to be…
STEWART McPherson, who founded the Darwin200 Global Voyage to mark the bicentenary by retracing Darwin’s historic journey aboard HMS Beagle, returns to Sladers Yard gallery at West Bay on Thursday 14th August, to talk about the insights the explorers have learned about Darwin and his discoveries from the voyage and how best to carry forward…
WILTSHIRE Community Foundation, one of the beneficiaries of our Deepest Wiltshire book sales, is 50 this year. It was the country’s first community foundation and the golden jubilee was celebrated at a sunny party at Wellington Barn near Calne, below the beautiful north Wiltshire downs and the Cherhill White Horse. The special guest at the…
THE ever-inventive Show of Strength theatre company continues its occasional series of theatrical walks, drawing on the history of Bath or Bristol, with The Frankenstein Experience, exploring Bath’s connection to Frankenstein and his creator, Mary Shelley. The two hour-long show, which includes a one-hour walking tour and entry to Mary Shelley’s house in Bath, is…
PURBECK-based writer Georgie Codd will host her first live night out in Dorset on Friday 13th June. In aid of Dorset Mind, it is based around her second book, Never Had a Dad: Adventures in Fatherlessness, which was published in 2024. The book attracted millions of listeners when it was previewed on the hit US…
POOLE At Dunkirk, a community exhibition that highlights the part local people played in the 1940 evacuation, is at the heart of the historic port’s VE Day commemorations, on at the gallery at the Lighthouse arts centre until Tuesday 27th May. Curated by Poole Maritime Trust with the support of a range of local organisations,…
HATED by academics, loved by children, Enid Blyton was a best-selling author whose works were excoriated by critics, banned by the BBC and hated by teachers and librarians. But what was she really like? Liz Grand portrays this controversial figure in The Secret Life of Enid Blyton, a play by Kit Hunter, coming to the…
OVER the last quarter of a century, performance poet Luke Wright has built up a reputation as one of Britain’s most popular and entertaining performers, winning a host of awards along the way. His 2025 tour continues at Poole Lighthouse on 15th May and East Quay at Watchet on 16th May. During his long career,…
WINDROSE Rural Media Trust has a new team at the helm, fir the first time in the more than 40 years since it was founded by Trevor Bailey, who has retired but will remain as a trustee. Three women have taken over the charity, which works across Dorset, Somerset and Wiltshire on educational, archival and…