Paul Weller 18:02:2018

Windsor Hall, BIC Assured, like a writer and performer of his calibre has every right to be, Paul Weller returned to Bournemouth as he has done for more than 40 years and once again confounded expectations by making it all even better than the faithful might have hoped. Of course he ended with Town Called Read More…

The Vinyl Say 014: Jacques Tati

In every collection there are records that get played all the time, many of them for years, decades even. Then there are those that, while no less treasured, somehow fall by the wayside to lie in wait, ripe for rediscovery. This occasional series chronicles some of those nuggets as they resurface from my own back pages. So, Read More…

Wild about Bourton

Since Saxon times, Dorset’s most northerly parish, Bourton, has been home to Egbert’s Stone, used by King Alfred to muster his troops before routing the Vikings at the Battle of Ethandun in 878, but placed there decades before by his grandfather to settle the boundaries of Dorset, Wiltshire and Somerset. A new rallying point for Read More…

Finding the ace of spades in Upton

It began as a challenge of sorts, a young man at a book signing goading the local author into writing about the clay industries that up until the early 1970s had employed scores of Upton men. Nine years later and writer Alan Burridge has published his book, Upton’s Clay Industries and Associated Rail Links, primarily Read More…

Moviola and the village hall screen scene

In the middle of the street in Yetminster, Moviola programme director Toby Walkley is on his way to the Post Office bearing the day’s second armful of out-going discs – and it’s barely lunchtime. With 200-plus venues from Cornwall to Orkney to service, it’s a wonder that he and his mother (and Moviola’s general manager), Read More…