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…
SHAFTESBURY Fringe, three days of every kind of entertainment imaginable, returns to the historic Dorset town from 18th to 20th July, with a programme of more than 300 events (a record number) spread around 37 venues. As director Rob Neely says, it’s all about Shaftesbury: “From its very creation, Shaftesbury Fringe has acted as a…
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…
PRONOUNS have become weirdly political in the last few years – it is all-too-easy to cause offence by using the wrong one when addressing or referring to a person who has adopted “they” and “their” as their preferred form. Author, environmental campaigner, poet and philosopher Robert Macfarlane encounters the same problem in his new book,…
CELEBRITY names may tend to grab the headlines at book festivals, but the real meat of the event will always be the literary writers, the Booker prize-winners and those whose books make us think, tell us things we didn’t know we needed to know, prod us into thinking more deeply or excite our imagination in…
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,…