A MUSIC video made for Dorset County Council has been scorned as “truly crackpot” by the Taxpayers’ Alliance. It shows the singing of a song called The Promise, written by the former Burton Bradstock School headteacher David Powell, now Dorset’s principal primary inspector. The Promise was made to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the UNICEF Convention on the [...]

MORE than 1000 people went to the National Trust’s first Spring Tide Food Festival at Hive Beach in Burton Bradstock. A farmers’ market sold produce grown, reared or made within 40 miles of the marquee, and there were craft stalls and free entertainment. If you weren’t there and you want to see it was like, [...]

DORSET’s role in the run-up to D-Day will be remembered when members of the World War Two Living History Association encamp near Bridport at the end of May. It’s 66 years since the US 1st Infantry Division left Dorset to invade Europe and defeat Hitler. The event at The Hyde in Walditch has two aims: to honour [...]

Dope Under Thorncombe is a feature film about drug smuggling in West Dorset. It was shot in the late 1930s, mostly at West Bay and along the coast, though some scenes were filmed inland, such as the gunfight at Eggardon Hill. The producer was Bridport man Frank Trevett, who inspired his friends and family to [...]

COMPOSER Rachel Leach has created a dramatic score to bring to life a silent film made in Bridport in the late 1930s. Dope Under Thorncombe, a melodrama based around West Bay, was made by local people under the direction of amateur filmmaker Frank Trevett. His daughter, Vivienne Smith, pictured with the camera that captured the [...]

I’D BEEN wondering what headline-grabbing action Burton Bradstock’s most famous resident was going to take in the run-up to the General Election. And now we know. In an article for The Guardian,  Billy Bragg explains that he’s withholding his taxes until the Chancellor of the Exchequer acts to curb bonus payments to investment bankers at the Royal Bank of [...]

SCIENTISTS have been using ground-penetrating radar to find out more about the history of Chesil Beach. Tests near Abbotsbury, Langton Herring and Ferrybridge have provided fresh clues about the evolution and internal make-up of one of the greatest features of the Dorset landscape. Results also hint at what might happen to the beach in future, particularly [...]

BEAMINSTER is recommended by chef Lesley Waters as a good base for “foodies” who want to explore West Dorset. Ms Waters says that Mat Follas’s restaurant The Wild Garlic is one of the reasons why this “classic Wessex market town” is “fast becoming a food hot spot”. It also has “a great butcher’s and greencocer’s”. That’s true, but it [...]