Purbeck Folk Festival 2014

Purbeck Folk Festival is the Jurassic Coast’s answer to Brigadoon – a weekend party in a happy valley that emerges from the ether for just a few days every summer as a gentle calm pervades what is otherwise a working sheep farm. There is movement between stages, but no rush. People tend to languish a Read More…

Camp Bestival 2014

Lulworth Castle, 31 July – 3 August It’s the very epitome of mainstream family-friendly festival going and this year’s event at Lulworth Castle again showed why it performs so well with the folks that give out awards for such things. Forensically well organised from the moment you arrive on site, it feels like a giant Read More…

Lloyd Cole 2014

It’s 30 years since Lloyd Cole first troubled the charts. Not that he’s particularly celebrating the fact, but three decades is a milestone in whatever walk of life becomes a chosen path. Chart star, cult figure, folk singer, deep thinker, golf swinger (when last reported he was playing off 6.5, fact fans, but has been Read More…

Roddy Woomble

Reformed indie rockers Idlewild are to play their only mainland UK festival date with an acoustic show at Purbeck Folk Festival in August. The Scottish band released their last album Post Electric Blues in 2009 and since then frontman Roddy Woomble has released two solo albums, while guitarist Rod Jones has released material under his Read More…

Buttoned up

Blandford cartwheels, bird’s eyes, singletons, old dorsets… they could easily be real ales, rare insects, or even Morris dances. In fact, they’re different types of Dorset Button. As with much of its history, the origins of Dorset Buttonry are shrouded in myth, but the industry flourished from the early 17th century until the mid-19th century. Read More…

Eddi Reader

Eddi Reader headlines the Friday night of Purbeck Folk Festival on bank holiday weekend, August 22. More than 25 years since she topped with charts with Perfect, Fairground Attraction’s relentlessly jaunty debut single, Eddi Reader has just released her tenth solo album. Vagabond is as fine a collection of songs as any she has shared Read More…