Author Archives

  • Celebrating the Longest Night: Solstice Shorts Festival
    Posted in: Events & Festivals, Highlights

    National Short Story Day falls on the same day as the Winter Solstice, December 21st, so it was timely of short story anthology publisher Arachne Press to put the call out to Britain’s literature lovers for The Solstice Shorts Festival: Longest Night, a mix of short stories, poems and folk music. The solstice, as you […]

  • The Enlightenment Spotlight Tour (Exhibition)
    Posted in: Shows & Exhibitions

    The Enlightenment was a period of 17th and 18th century European history when mythology, faith and superstition were challenged for the first time by philosophers and thinkers driven by logic, science and empirical facts. It was a significant departure from the established order and included questioning the authority of church, monarchy and state. The Enlightenment […]

  • Spellbound by The Dreamwatcher
    Posted in: Drama & Theatre, Highlights

    In the run-in to the festive season if you were looking for a Christmas evening with a difference, with that unique cultural edge, I have to inform you that you’ve just missed it! British-Bulgarian storytelling performance company A Spell In Time performed The Dreamwatcher, Winter Tales of Hidden Bulgaria to a packed audience at the […]

  • TinTin Treat
    Posted in: Highlights, Shows & Exhibitions

    Fans of TinTin will love this new exhibition at Somerset House in Temple. Families with young kids will find the wallpaper style floor to ceiling length prints a welcome alternative to the heavier fare at other galleries and it’s a little like walking into a comic book. Created by Belgian illustrator Georges Remi, more commonly […]

  • Britain’s Child Migrants
    Posted in: Highlights, Shows & Exhibitions

    Child migration in Britain began to gain momentum around the turn of the century when grinding poverty amongst the Victorian working classes meant they had two choices, send their children to the workhouse or if they were too young to work, to families abroad where they had a chance of survival. As you enter the […]

  • Out of Chaos: Ben Uri 100 Years in London
    Posted in: Reviews, Shows & Exhibitions

    The current global migrant crisis, where predominantly Muslim nationals are fleeing war and poverty draws some parallels with Jewish refugees fleeing persecution at the turn of the century and during World War 11. This exhibition at Somerset House titled Art, Identity and Migration focuses on the work of Jewish immigrants or their descendants with the […]

  • Black Inked Pearl Book Launch
    Posted in: Books, Highlights

    If you find the idea of a novel combining African story-telling and Gaelic lore intriguing then you’ll be intrigued by Ruth Finnegan’s latest work Black Inked Pearl. If you also hear it was written from the author’s actual dreams and taken straight from the subconscious unedited, then attending the book launch is a no-brainer. The […]

  • The National Maritime Museum
    Posted in: Places

    Britain’s history as a global naval power during the era of empire is preserved in splendid grandeur in Greenwich’s National Maritime Museum and ideally located within walking distance of the harboured Cutty Sark so you can make a day of it. It’s surprising to learn that at its height the British empire covered a quarter […]

  • The Barjeel Art Foundation Collection (Exhibition)
    Posted in: Reviews, Shows & Exhibitions

    In a mammoth programme from September 2015 to Jan 2017 the Whitechapel Gallery hosts the Barjeel Art Foundation Collection in a series so big it requires four separate exhibitions. This is the largest exhibition of Arab art ever held in the UK and comes from Sultan Sooud Al-Qassemi’s UAE based archive of work sourced from […]