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Romeo and Juliet at Reading Abbey

Romeo and Juliet at Reading Abbey

“What’s here? A cup closed in my true love’s hand?” The audience looks on in silent sorrow as Romeo drinks the poison and Juliet stabs herself with a knife. I know this is coming of course, but that doesn’t stop me crying. I’m watching the most romantic of...
Cornwall’s Minack Theatre

Cornwall’s Minack Theatre

My train hurtles through miles of open countryside, past fields of stubble and leafy green crops in straight lines. There’s long grass dotted with white blooms and yellow tufts, and clouds of summer wildflowers float across the landscape like purple smoke. We...
Chelsea Physic Garden

Chelsea Physic Garden

Sunflowers helped clean the soil in Chernobyl by soaking up radioactive particles and storing them in their roots, I discovered, as I pottered about reading the labels and smelling the lavender in London’s oldest botanical garden. During August’s respite from...
Foo Fighters at Reading

Foo Fighters at Reading

We arrived late for Sunday’s Reading Festival because we were only there to see Foo Fighters. It’s a mainly young crowd here — a grubby throng of demob-happy teenagers, although I hear the average age went up on the Sunday — so, heads down and sunglasses on, we...
Shakespeare’s Globe

Shakespeare’s Globe

We all stop talking and turn to watch the cast of Twelfth Night sashay out on to the stage. I am visiting Shakespeare’s Globe on London’s South Bank – a replica of the Elizabethan playhouse where William Shakespeare was playwright, actor and co-owner between 1599 and...