Queen Victoria and the Dorset Piddle Riddle
“Legend has it that the villages of Puddletown and Briantspuddle, which used to contain the word ‘piddle’, changed their village titles to avoid embarrassing Queen Victoria whilst she was visiting.” So says the newly-published Little Book of Dorset. Is it true?
Finding myself in John Fowles’s library
Books on sale from his collection remind me, uncomfortably, of my own encounters with the irascible author of The French Lieutenant’s Woman
Well I’ll be Damned: film locations holiday is first for Dorset
PLACES in Weymouth and Portland used for the shooting of Sixties Hammer shocker The Damned are to feature in a unique mini-break. Cameraman and director Nick Gilbey will show tourists around spots haunted by Oliver Reed as a dapper seaside psychopath, and explain how The Damned’s stuntman earned his brandy when he crashed his Jaguar [...]
Lyme Regis fossil hunter Mary Anning acclaimed as top British scientist – and secret inspiration for John Fowles
THE LYME REGIS fossil hunter Mary Anning has been named by the Royal Society as the third most influential female scientist in British history. The move comes as yet another book is published about Anning, once an almost entirely forgotten figure. The Canadian novelist Joan Thomas has written a novel – out next week – [...]
Subscribers wanted for The Lymiad. Hand over £20, get your name in it
LYME REGIS Philpot Museum’s Trustees have issued an unusual invitation: to subscribe to the first publication of The Lymiad, or Letters from Lyme to A Friend at Bath, written during the Autumn of 1818. There’s a most interesting story behind it. In 1978 the artist Laurence Whistler gave this bound manuscript of a poem, some 80 [...]
Playwright Ann Jellicoe to be guest of honour at fundraising literary luncheon
ONE OF Lyme’s best-known residents, the playwright Ann Jellicoe, will be guest of honour at a luncheon in aid of the town Museum on 4 February at the Alexandra Hotel when she will talk on “Trials and Triumphs: a Life in Theatre.” A long time supporter of the Museum, and at one time co-curator with [...]
Trigger from Only Fools and Horses to read Nobel Prize winner at Bridport Arts Centre
BRIDPORT Arts Centre has just released its Spring theatre programme for 2010 and Trigger’s take on Harold Pinter is officially one of the highlights. Roger Lloyd Pack (aka Trigger) is going to be reading through Pinter’s 1995 play Ashes to Ashes. He’ll appear with Harriet Walter as part of A Pinter Celebration day on January [...]