One of the best-loved and most versatile opera stars of the last 40 years, Sir Willard White's illustrious career has taken him to the most prestigious opera houses and concert halls throughout the world.

Now audiences have the opportunity to share an evening with Sir Willard as he reminisces about his life on stage & screen and sings some of the songs that have been important to him from the Nat King Cole of his youth in Jamaica, through the first truly complete recording of Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess in 1976 to the songs that made the Bass-Baritone singer Paul Robeson famous in the 1920s and ‘30s.

Sir Willard will be accompanied by the Kymaera guitar duo comprising Shane Hill and Simon James who have been performing together for over twenty years. Highlights of the partnership which features guitarists Shane Hill and Simon James have included appearing with the classical vocal legend Maria Ewing as well as the late UK jazz vocal legend Frank Holder.

Our programme celebrates important anniversaries of four of our greatest Romantic poets, the 250th anniversaries of the births of William Wordsworth in 2020, and Samuel Taylor Coleridge in 2022, and the bicentenaries of the deaths of John Keats in 2021, and Percy Bysshe Shelley in 2022.

Their work has an extraordinary resonance for us today, as they lived at a time which saw the birth of the ideas, values and dreams of our modern world. The dramatic move from country to urban living, due to increasing industrialisation, led Wordsworth and his close friend, Coleridge, to became concerned with people’s increasing separation from Nature. They sought to present, in their poems, an alternative way of life, in harmony with the natural world. Their works have stood the test of time and are as relevant today as they were two hundred years ago. We include the nation’s favourite poem, Shelly’s Ode to a Nightingale, as a reminder that, despite the great suffering caused by the pandemic, many of us found unexpected joy and solace in hearing, for the first time, birdsong in the middle of our cities.

Availability: Sundays only

An evening of wartime letters between the actress Celia Johnson and her husband Peter Fleming read by their daughter, Lucy Fleming, and Simon Williams. These touching and amusing letters from Celia to her husband tell of her experiences during the war – from coping with a large isolated house full of evacuated children, learning to drive a tractor, dealing with rationing, becoming an auxiliary police-woman and all the while accepting offers, when she could get away, to act. She went on to act for David Lean, Noel Coward, wartime propaganda films & broadcasts, and ultimately in 1945 starring in Brief Encounter for which she received an Oscar nomination.

Peter Fleming was away for most of the war - he writes about his adventures and trials working on deception in India and the Far East. Not only are the letters highly engaging but they also provide a fascinating historical insight into a time of true austerity and fearfulness.

World renowned musicians Julian and Jiaxin Lloyd Webber take their audience on a unique ‘double-sided’ journey of live music and ‘behind the scenes’ stories about their lives in the most influential musical dynasty of modern times.

With a first half that explores the extraordinary reasons why Bach’s sublime Cello Suites remained unperformed for two hundred years before taking their place amongst the most loved pieces of classical music.

The second half sees Julian embark on a magical musical tour through his amazing career along with a rare chance to quiz both Lloyd Webbers about playing with such musical icons as Elton John, Yehudi Menuhin, Katherine Jenkins, Tim Rice, Joaquin Rodrigo, Cleo Laine, Stephane Grappelli and, of course, his brother Andrew Lloyd Webber. Not to be missed!

Although a writer from the Victorian era, Dickens'  work transcends his time, language and culture. He remains a massive contemporary influence throughout the world and his writings continue to inspire film, TV, art, literature, artists and academia.

Robert Powell and and Liza Goddard trace the fascinating life of the author through his own writings and letters together with those of his friends and contemporaries,

The script is illuminated by some of the funniest scenes in all literature as well as some of the most moving, embracing the romantic and the grotesque, the satirical and the macabre.

We bring to life Dickens' universally loved characters, from Mr. Pickwick, Mr. Micawber and Mrs. Nickleby, to Mrs. Gamp, Uriah Heep and Scrooge.

And we reveal Dickens the celebrity, the social reformer, the actor, the entrepreneur, and, above all, Dickens the supreme entertainer.

With flautist Clive Conway and pianist Christine Croshaw

Robert Powell and actress Liza Goddard (who gave the definitive performance of Elizabeth Bennett in Pride and Prejudice on BBC TV) bring you Jane Austen’s world…

‘For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbours, and laugh at them in our turn.’   (Pride and Prejudice)

No writer, with the exception of Shakespeare, stands higher in public esteem and affection than Jane Austen. This celebration is for those who have always loved her, and for those who would like to know more about the enigmatic and shadowy figure behind the popular image of bonnets, tea and gentility.

Jane Austen continues to fascinate us because she reveals human nature with all its delicious quirks and foibles.   From the rumbustious delights of her juvenile works to the extraordinary explosion of vitality in her last and uncompleted novel, Sanditon, we take you on a colourful and revealing journey through the life and works of this most paradoxical and bewitching author.

With flautist Clive Conway and pianist Christine Croshaw

Charles Dickens can truly be said to have invented our traditional Christmas. In this seasonal show we reveal Dickens the celebrity, the social reformer, the actor, the entrepreneur, and, above all, Dickens the supreme entertainer. We celebrate his life and times through his writings and scenes from his best-loved novels, with a seasonal twist, tasting the varied delights of winter ice-skating, Pickwick's Christmas party, the magic of the newly-introduced Christmas tree, festive feasting and philanthropy, and goodwill to all men! Not forgetting, of course, that perennial favourite, A Christmas Carol, and all interwoven with seasonal merriment and music.

Although a writer from the Victorian era, Dickens’s work transcends his time, language and culture. He remains a massive contemporary influence throughout the world and his writings continue to inspire film, TV, art, literature, artists and academia.

We celebrate the 200th anniversary of Queen Victoria’s birth, and the birth, during her reign, of Christmas as we know it today.

The Victorian Christmas was a time of magic, hope and goodwill to all people. Prince Albert introduced the Christmas tree to England in 1846, the first greeting cards were sent in 1861, Charles Dickens revelled in his seasonal stories, culminating in the greatest tale of all, A Christmas Carol. And Mrs Beeton was on hand to give advice on the culinary delights of roast turkey, plum puddings and mince pies!

We invite you to join us in celebrating the delights of Christmas past, in the company of Queen Victoria, Charles Dickens, Mrs. Beeton, Thomas Hardy, Lewis Carroll, Edward Lear, Alfred Lord Tennyson, and, much loved by the Queen, Gilbert and Sullivan. The festive spirit is enhanced by familiar and much-loved music by Handel, Mendelssohn, Liszt, Vivaldi, Bizet, Scott Joplin, Debussy, and traditional tunes and carols.

With flautist Clive Conway and pianist Christine Croshaw

‍

Robert Powell brings vividly to life, through the composer’s own words, the fascinating character of one of the most extraordinary superstars in musical history. Charismatic, fascinating, outrageously unconventional, possessed of great charm and wit, he was a true Bohemian, equally at home in the lowlife nightclubs of Montmartre as in the aristocratic salons of Parisian Society.

Liza Goddard joins Robert in presenting the unfortunate women who were bewitched by this strange and complex man. Shootings, attempted suicide, adultery, public scandal - all featured in the passionate life of Debussy!

Throughout all of the drama of his life flowed the inspired music which shocked the establishment by its sensuality and daring harmonic language; and how this quixotic genius loved to shock Parisian Society! His wicked sense of humour, and delight in poking fun, is wonderfully revealed in his own words.

Speaking of a society lady who sang his songs, he remarked: “She sings like a locomotive in distress, but her buttered scones are marvellous!”

Debussy wrote to his wife while on tour in Europe:

Vienna is a raddled old city where one suffers an excess of Brahms and Puccini.  As for Budapest, the river Danube refuses to be as blue as a certain famous waltz maintains it is. The Hungarians are all liars, but charming!  But I brought back some marvellous chocolates......”

With flautist Clive Conway and pianist Christine Croshaw

Rudyard Kipling is one of the most intriguing and controversial of all our great writers. We explore the many different worlds inhabited by this great storyteller and poet through his autobiographical writings, stories and verse, (all interwoven with music of the period) including his traumatic childhood years at the hands of a cruel foster-mother, seven years hard  in India as a journalist  learning the writer's trade, early years of married life in Vermont, where he observed America and the Americans with an increasingly ironical eye, his time as a war-correspondent in his beloved South Africa, and, finally, settling in his dream house in Sussex, where he became obsessed with English history, taking an enormous pride in our heritage, which he illuminated with poems and verse on themes from Roman times to his own day. At the same time he was becoming increasingly concerned with the fragility of the English way of life, which he, with chilling accuracy, foresaw as being threatened by a terrible Armageddon approaching.

When his fears were realised in the outbreak of the First World War, Kipling became one of the great chroniclers of that time, in his moving, often painfully eloquent stories and poems.

He was the great spokesman for his age, a time dominated by a sense of  imperial destiny, which was soon to be destroyed for ever.

With flautist Clive Conway and pianist Christine Croshaw

Sin is something that you’re sure you shouldn’t enjoy - but you do!

Saintliness is something you should enjoy - but do you?

Saints and Sinners is a fascinating collection of the really good, the truly wicked, and those torn both ways, from Genesis to Jane Austen, Richard III to Mark Twain, Mother Teresa to Lord Byron, popular ballads to anonymous limericks and from Back to the Blues.

For a guide to all that’s good and wicked - naughty and nice - this is the show for you.

Sources include Dorothy Parker, Thackeray, e.e. cummings, W.H. Auden, Bernard Shaw Brecht, Oscar Wilde, Ogden Nash, Mae West, Somerset Maugham, Jonathan Swift, Byron, Voltaire, James Thurber, and our old friend Anon.

With music by Donizetti, William Walton, Gluck, Bach, and further contributions

from the world of popular music.

With flautist Clive Conway and pianist Christine Croshaw

‘SILVER SCREEN’ is an affectionate and nostalgic romp through the first hundred or so years of cinema. Starting with the Lumiere Brothers in Paris in 1895 and ending with ‘BOND 22’ at Pinewood Studios in 2008, we meet on our way Charlie Chaplin, Mae West, Mickey Mouse, Humphrey Bogart, Clark Gable, Groucho Marx and many, many others - the journey sweetened with musical interludes from Scott Joplin, George Gershwin through to John Barry’s ‘James Bond’  theme.

With flautist Clive Conway and pianist Christine Croshaw

Our celebration of English Eccentrics introduces colourful and remarkable characters who have enlivened and entertained us through the ages, and whose originality and strength of character stands out now more than ever in an age of mass-market conformity.

We bring you Joshua Norton, self-proclaimed Emperor of the United States of America; Hermione Gingold, whose autobiography, The World is Square, more than lives up to its title;  William Buckland, who ate anything and everything from a bluebottle to the heart of King Louis XIV; and many equally odd and endearing characters.

More familiar names include Lewis Carroll, Dr. Samuel Johnson, Sir Thomas Beecham, Lord Byron, Beau Brummell, Mrs Malaprop, and Oscar Wilde.

With flautist Clive Conway and pianist Christine Croshaw

From Outside Edge to Casualty.

From The Royal to Poldark.

From Jeeves & Wooster to Superman

From the East End to the West End.

Over the last forty years, Robert has appeared in many top television series and West End plays. For one night only, he’ll be talking and singing his way through some of his favourite and funniest experiences. The ups and downs, the dangers and occasional madness of an actor’s life.

Join Bob as he heads off down memory lane with an evening full of song, anecdote and legitimate name-dropping – all inspired by surviving forty years as an actor.  With the help of pictures – some moving – and music, he’ll be telling tales of his exploits in drama school, repertory theatre, the West End, radio, television and film. Many have been fun, some have been disastrous and others just plain dangerous. If you have an interest in how actors really work and why they do it, this is the show for you.

Six Degrees of Separation reflects conductor Charles  Hazlewood's passionate belief that there are only 2 sorts of music: good & bad. The very idea that if you like drum’n’bass you won't like Wagner, if you like Wagner you won't like Renaissance music, or R&B or or... That all music is very connected, NOT a series of mutually exclusive endpoints.

Six Degrees of Separation draws a tangible and hugely enjoyable link between JS Bach & The Prodigy, through 5 other 'degrees' or  tracks along the way.  Through anecdote, illustration and above all some seriously good music, Charles's event speaks equally to the musically literate and the music-shy. This is a lovely, stimulating, diverting and satisfying way to spend an hour or so.

'Charles Hazlewood - BBCTV's pin-up conductor'   Telegraph

'What Heston Blumental is to food, Charles Hazlewood is to music'  Guardian

'Charles Hazlewood is acid-hot' Observer

Apart from her appearance on Strictly Come Dancing  Katie is best known as a presenter on BBC Radio 3 and she also fronts much of the coverage of the BBC Proms for BBC Two and Radio 3 .

Katie started her journalistic career with the BBC, where she was a researcher on Radio 4's 'Moneybox' before going to ITN as Arts and Media editor, where she became the youngest newscaster on British national television since ITN's creation.

For five years she covered showbiz events around the world and hosted the Classical Brit Awards four times. She then presented ITV Lunchtime News for six years before taking a leading role as an anchor in the coverage of elections, royal weddings and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

In April 2010, she moved back to the BBC. With an arts brief, including fronting the coverage of the Proms for BBC Two, BBC Four and Radio 3. She is a presenter of Radio 3's Afternoon on 3, Breakfast programmes and also presents the Traveller's Tree series on Radio 4.

With flautist Clive Conway and pianist Christine Croshaw

It is still one of the best kept secrets in show business that Patricia Routledge trained not only as an actress but also as a singer and had considerable experience and success in musical theatre, both in this country and in the United States of America.

Her many awards include a Tony for her Broadway performance in the Styne-Harburg musical Darling of the Day and a Laurence Olivier Award for her performance in Leonard Bernstein’s Candide

Her one woman show Come for the Ride toured the UK in 1988 and in 1992 she played Nettie Fowler in the highly acclaimed production of Carousel at the National Theatre.

In this fascinating encounter with the writer and broadcaster Edward Seckerson she recalls this very special part of her career with access to some rare and treasured recordings.

Writer and broadcaster Edward Seckerson is former Chief Classical Music Critic of The Independent newspaper and a founder member of The ArtsDesk.com.

He wrote and presented the long-running BBC Radio3 show Stage and Screen where he interviewed many of the biggest names in the business. During his journalistic career he has written for most major music publications and is on the review panel of Gramophone magazine.

Join Britain’s most popular soprano for a delightful evening of favourite songs and arias, reminiscences and chat.

Accompanied by, and in conversation with, Anna Tilbrook, Lesley's behind-the-scenes stories and anecdotes will give audiences a unique insight into her life on the stage.

 “A natural effervescent and powerhouse voice.” Financial Times

“She cares about the people who come to hear her sing .... Through her  records and her unstuffy attitude to singing, she has clearly reached out to music lovers far beyond the rarefied confines of the opera house.”    Sunday Times

“She's a down-to-earth Northerner...she's incredibly funny and emotional,

with a glorious voice.”  The Daily Mail

The incredible Siân Phillips, in an evening of songs including musical numbers by Leonard Bernstein, Jacques Brel, Kurt Weill, Rogers and Hart and Susan Werner,

Directed by Brendan O' Hea,

Musical director Kevin Amos.

“…… it is a mark of just how exemplary she is in this genre as it genuinely feels like the first time she is telling each anecdote. And boy, what stories she has to tell: lifting the lid on Marlene Dietrich’s diva tantrums and the way she worked audiences; poking fun at the dour Welsh sense of humour with Richard Burton and his brother; ………..and some hilarious backstage stories featuring Beryl Reid and a drunk.

But best of all was the affection with which she recalled Noël Coward and accordingly, he popped up more than once in the set-list, Phillips being equally at home with his playful lyricism as with letting her rich tones glide through the melancholy of If Love Were All.

………There’s a great pleasure in seeing people do things so supremely well. It may sound simple, but too often cabaret shows are just thrown together with any real thought to the flow of the show, the links and anecdotes that pepper the evening and the skill to truly demonstrate the passion for the material. Siân Phillips manages all of this with an effortless grace ……… “

"Sophistication triumphs, vibrant, intelligent, a wicked sense of humour...a voice with the throb of a mandolin. Take the nearest taxi and experience her fast, you will not see anything like her anytime soon".

Rex Reed, the New York Observer.

By Hugh Whitemore

With grateful acknowledgments to Lady Soames

Directed by Gareth Armstrong

“My most brilliant achievement was my ability to be able to persuade my wife to marry me.” Winston Churchill.

My Darling Clemmie is the remarkable, moving and highly entertaining story of the woman who married one of the truly great figures of the 20th century: Sir Winston Churchill. “The Guardian Angel of our country’s guardian.” said  Lord Halifax.

In 2009 My Darling Clemmie was performed at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in the Assembly Rooms.

Fascinating … highly convincing … a moving production of a complex marriage told with skillful lucidity   The Telegraph

... an entertaining and compelling performance... delivered as skilfully as it is written, Edinburgh Festivals Magazine

Based on Vera Brittain’s haunting autobiography.

Having battled her way to Somerville College in the face of parental opposition, Vera Brittain abandoned her studies at the outbreak of the First World War to serve as a volunteer nurse witnessing the horrors of trench warfare. In 1918, with all those closest to her dead, she returned to Oxford and later devoted her energies to the causes of pacifism and feminism, writing and lecturing world-wide.

In 1933 she published Testament of Youth. This haunting autobiography conveyed to an entire generation the essence of their common experience of war. It was a best seller in both Britain and America.

Superlatives here!…a remarkable performance of a remarkable woman’s early Life.

The Scotsman.

Rohan McCullough’s performance brings my mother’s famous book on the First World War… alive bringing out the poignancy and profundity of the narrative. She has a sensitive understanding of my mother’s writing, and sometimes seems almost to become the young nurse who wrote the diary… I strongly commend her presentation.

Shirley Williams in the House of Lords 16th July 2001

This one woman tour-de-force… Rohan McCullough’s stunning solo performance

Time Out

Informative and moving… a model of elegance and economy

The Times