Nile Rodgers joins Nocturne Live line-up

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Trio of stars join Gary Barlow, Richard Ashcroft, Lightning Seeds, and The Zutons for summer shows at Blenheim Palace, Oxfordshire for Nocturne Live 2025

Nile Rodgers, the legendary songwriter, producer, and guitarist, has been confirmed as the latest headliner for the Nocturne Live concert series, returning to the iconic Blenheim Palace in Oxfordshire from June 18th-22nd. Rodgers, a Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductee and Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award winner, will deliver a dynamic performance with his band CHIC on Sunday, June 22nd. Fans can expect a journey through his iconic catalogue, including hits like Le Freak, Good Times, and Everybody Dance.

Joining Rodgers are R&B legends En Vogue, known for hits like Hold On and Free Your Mind, and soul icons Shalamar, celebrated for disco classics such as A Night to Remember.

Other confirmed acts for Nocturne Live 2025 include Gary Barlow (Friday, June 20th) and Richard Ashcroft, Lightning Seeds, and The Zutons (Thursday, June 19th), with more artists to be announced.

Since 2015, Nocturne Live has become one of the UK’s premier stately home concert series, hosting stars like Elton John, Lionel Richie, and Kylie Minogue. The 2025 series runs from June 18th-22nd, with tickets for Nile Rodgers and CHIC starting at £54. Tickets go on sale Friday, January 24th, at 9:30am, with a pre-sale beginning Tuesday, January 21st, for mailing list subscribers. Limited VIP packages, including dining in Blenheim Palace’s State Rooms, are available at Nocturne Live | 18TH – 22ND JUNE 2025

Tickets for Nile Rodgers & CHIC go on sale at 9.30am this Friday January 24th 2025 from www.nocturnelive.com

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Bill Bailey’s Thoughtifier is pure fun

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Millie Deere reviews Bill Bailey’s latest thought-provoking and very funny show at London’s Royal Haymarket Theatre until 15th February

A sleek, black set lined with musical instruments of assorted ilk. Bill Bailey in all black bar two roses embroidered onto his shirt. Upstage, a projection of rolling meadows littered with pipes snaking across the landscape in an eerie yet colourful engulfment of the natural world. Thoughtifier immediately strikes an unsettling chord of a tarnished humanity, which Bailey’s very human whimsies aim to flip on its head.

So, what is Thoughtifier about? In Bailey’s words, “[r]ather than panic about AI and worry about how much it’s going to take over, I just think we ought to […] revel in human achievement and creativity”, “consciousness”‘”, and “the way that we’re able to create music”.

Extolling the wonder of human harmonisation in his coaxing of a rather bashful audience to join him in a recorder-led melody (indeed a vivid reminder of our “‘school nemesis”) was perhaps not the most compelling starting evidence, though maybe I can only blame my tone-deaf peers sat my immediate vicinity. An interactive song with some Bluetooth balls was certainly more stimulating and aroused some inelegant British giggles.

In any case, Bailey’s own music was predictably outstanding. To everyone’s delight, a range of stringed instruments were lined up proudly on stage right eagerly awaiting their moment to be strummed by the national treasure.

Fans will be gleefully satiated with numbers ranging from a woeful warble of crab regret to a serenade at the check-out till, and a Turkish translation of Coldplay’s Yellow on a bouzouki. Other highlights included Happy Birthday (aka the “milestone of decay”) in MM7 key (a cocktail of the “needy” minor and “evocative” major key) and a triumphant finale on a laser techno harp. Indeed, it is Bailey’s eccentrically experimental musical numbers that mark the comedic culmination of his performance.

Curiously, Bailey attempts to grapple with some of the heavier themes of bee extinction, AI takeover, and faltering British politics with a disco ball ominously strung above his head (it’s a shame he didn’t hark back to his Strictly days and break out into a quickstep). This contradiction is symbolic of the occasional seesawing between varying meditations on existence without landing firmly on one trajectory of discussion.

While perhaps slightly bemused about his exact point, the audience leaves in stitches after two hours of ceaseless giggling. Bailey is a wonder to watch; at once highly au fait with the contemporary socio-political milieu yet living in a mind of his own (in the best way possible). His wit, multifaceted musical talents, and rib-tickling ruminations make Thoughtifier just a lot of pure fun.

Four stars ****, Millie Deere.

Bill Bailey’s new book My Animals and Other Animals is out now; visit BILL BAILEY

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Affinity Water’s eco garden competition winners

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Well done to Sam Proctor of Amersham’s Chiltern Garden Design and other local stars in Affinity Water’s competition

Sam brought her debut show garden to the RHS Chelsea Flower Show in May, to much acclaim. The Water Saving Garden was designed to highlight the urgent need to save and reuse rainwater, a cause inspired by Chiltern chalk streams.

After the show, the award-winning garden was generously offered in a unique competition by the garden’s sponsor, Affinity Water, open to be won by a community garden or local initiative that’s beneficial to people and planet.

Three entries were shortlisted for consideration by the judging panel, all of extremely high merit. The winner is Iver Environment Centre, run by charity Groundwork South which delivers inspiring ecology-based learning to primary local school pupils. They also run volunteering programmes for skills development and to improve mental and physical health for young and old alike.

Iver Environment Centre will incorporate The Water Saving Garden into an educational water garden to inspire people to learn about pollinators, plants and changing weather patterns. Together with Holmer Green-based Castle Landscapes, who built the garden at RHS Chelsea, the team worked with volunteers to install the show garden to be enjoyed and looked after by the centre’s 8,000 visitors and volunteers per year.

Honourable mentions also go to the runners up Stony Dean School in Amersham, and Watford & Three Rivers Trust in Watford, which had strong entries to the competition and both do really beneficial work helping local people with significant needs.

Sam tells us: “Chiltern Garden Design offers a bespoke garden design service to homeowners, offering everything from conceptual design and planning to detailed design, bespoke built-in furniture, outdoor lighting design, planting design, irrigation, aftercare and more. We were honoured to have been able to create our first show garden at RHS Chelsea Flower Show this year, for which we received a bronze medal. Our passion is bringing people joy through creating beautiful gardens that suit them and their family’s needs.

“My wish is that humanity wakes up and gets together to find solutions to the climate crisis coming down the track before it’s too late.”

Sam, 51, lives with her husband Nigel, an award-winning photographer, and moved to Bucks from Manchester. “We love Nena in Amersham as well as the Grocery for brunch and coffee. Gershon & Sons in Old Amersham and No.2 Pound Street in Wendover are both fabulous for a bit of cheese indulgence. No 1 High St in Wendover is a lovely moochy shop for gifts and treats. We were so sad that Drop in Old Amersham has recently closed – great wine and company were always to be found there and we wish James all the best for his next venture.

“We have spent many happy evenings at the Queens Head in Chesham, and enjoy a walk down to the Crown, the Swan or the Elephant & Castle in Amersham old town for a drink or a bite. The Griffin and Hawkyns Brasserie in old Amersham are both lovely for special dinners, as well as Brazils in Chesham. An honourable mention to The Drawing Room in Chesham which is quirky and fun, and actually where Nigel and I had our first date!

“We love Heritage Day in Old Amersham and are looking forward to introducing friends from outside the area to its delights this year.”

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Henry VIII at West Horsley Place

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West Horsley Place takes you back to the splendour of Henry VIII’s time on July 27th & 28th for a Tudor festival like no other at the haunt of pleasure seekers and plotters

This summer be transported back to Tudor times at West Horsley Place when they’ll be Hosting Henry VIII at a festival of authentic Tudor merrymaking.

The manor house and estate will recall entertaining the legendary king and his court 500 years ago with banquets, music, dancing, archery, falconry and a joust.

West Horsley Place was an out-of-town palace for the Tudor royal family. Henry VIII gifted it to his longest-lasting court favourite, Henry Courtenay, marquess of Exeter. The pair had been close since boyhood – Courtenay was of royal blood, the grandson of King Edward IV, Henry VIII called him ‘cousin’.

The King not only gave the Marquess West Horsley and its hunting park he also match-made his marriage to noblewoman, Gertrude Blount. At the peak of Henry’s ambitions as king, when he divorced Katharine of Aragon, married Anne Boleyn, and began his raid on the Church, the Courtenays were the golden couple of the Tudor court; and Horsley was their playground.

Everything was rosy until the power-hungry and increasingly paranoid Henry turned on those closest to him, even his own cousin. In 1538, the Courtenays fell under suspicion of hatching a plot at Horsley to overthrow Henry. They were arrested, Henry executed and Gertrude and her son were imprisoned in the Tower of London.

Researchers at the University of Exeter who worked with West Horsley Place Trust to uncover the history of the house, unearthed ‘snapshots’ of the colourful history of the time, including Lady Gertrude’s frantic letters attempting to explain away the suspicions of plots whispered in the house and garden, and the interviews given by household servants who told of the great and the good they saw come and go.

An account of a visit with a rich banquet includes gannet, heron, partridge, stork, stuffed rabbit, sturgeon and venison pasties among the meat dishes and blancmange, clotted cream and pistachios for pudding on the menu. The table was set with gold and silver goblets, jugs and serving plates and music played on the virginals, regals (portable organs) and viols.

This summer’s festival will capture the sights, sounds and tastes of this Tudor country house-party. Specialists will conjure up Tudor food, clothing, jewellery and weaponry, with music, jousting, dancing and hawking as well as fun for children such as shield making and face painting.

Book tickets, £25 adults, £10 children (3-16) and journey back in time, please visit West Horsley Place Trust

All proceeds from ticket sales support the mission to repair and conserve West Horsley Place, which is currently on Historic England’s Heritage At Risk register.

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On a mission with Shakespeare

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To like or not to like Shakespeare? That’s the question Louise Taney is posing with her new theatre company Truth Told who are staging Romeo & Juliet at Cogges Manor Farm

Louise Taney is on a mission to help everyone enjoy Shakespeare and see the relevance of his plays today.

She originally trained at The Oxford School of Drama near Woodstock and has participated in TV, film and theatre shows but her passion is Shakespeare, and this is the driving force behind her new theatre company, Truth Told Theatre which is performing Romeo & Juliet on the Manor Lawn at Cogges Manor Farm in Witney, July 17th-19th.

Having never understood Shakespeare properly at school, where everyone would read round the class not knowing what they were saying, Louise discovered whilst at drama school that the grammar was there as an instruction for the actor on how to say the lines and to give an indication of how the character was feeling (for example, a full stop in the middle of a speech meant a quick change of thought for the character). By using the grammar, the characters come to life and she realised that Shakespeare should always be acted and not read, along with the fact that anyone who could act could act in a Shakespeare play!

This she proved when directing and playing Titania in A Midsummer Night’s Dream two years ago at Cogges in conjunction with Buttercross Theatre Productions. She quips: “One of the comments I got from a member of the audience after the show was that she’d never laughed at Shakespeare before!”

Launching her company this year, Louise says the thinking behind the Truth Told name is about playing a character truthfully to do justice to their performance and the script. The logo being of someone looking in a mirror, that has been a long-term symbol of truth.

She has been working with Cogges on other projects and loves the unique setting of the Manor lawn, with the farmhouse providing a unique and relevant back-drop for the play.

Louise edits Shakespeare’s plays down to a manageable watching time of two hours including an interval and tries to make her shows visually stunning, fast paced and full of action so modern audiences can relate to them.

She says: “Romeo & Juliet is the original teenage drama that ends in tragedy and the ending is extremely similar to storylines seen in modern soap operas such as EastEnders and Hollyoaks. It is about teenagers not being listened to and being forced to conform to the rules of the adult world along with gang warfare, all of which are still relevant today.”

There’s a bar and refreshments to add to your enjoyment. Bring your own rug or low backed chair. Doors open: 6pm. Curtain up: 6.30pm. Tickets £14 adults, £10 child 3-13; £12.60 adult / £9 child for Season / annual pass holders, £12 students.

Book at Buy Admission Tickets | Cogges (myonlinebooking.co.uk)

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Big Butterfly Count is flying high

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You can help protect the future of local species under threat thanks to Butterfly Conservation’s Big Butterfly Count, 14th July to 6th August

Butterfly spotting can be one of summer’s most wonderful experience. As the sun appears, and flowers bloom, more and more sightings of our fluttery favourites can be seen.

You may be able to identify some common butterflies quickly. The Brimstone, for example, is a yellow-green butterfly that’s one of the first species to be spotted in spring. The Comma is another favourite for many, and has distinctively scalloped wing edges and its underwings resemble dead leaves as a form of camouflage.

A number of stunning day-flying moths bring the same buzz. The Six-spot Burnet has striking red spots on each forewing. Butterfly Conservation has a handy online identification tool. You may also like to familiarise yourself with different species’ habitats. Red Admirals enjoy almost any habitat from hedgerows to the top of mountains. Others, such as the Speckled Wood inhabit woodland.

Holtspur Bottom Butterfly Reserve, HP9 1DH, covers an area of about 4.5 hectares (11 acres), and is managed thanks to the hard work of local Butterfly Conservation volunteers.

And, Yoesden HP14 4AR, is home to an impressive array of butterflies, considered by many one of the jewels of the Chilterns AONB, with some 28 species recorded, including three scarce blue species: Adonis, chalkhill and small blue butterflies, all of which rely on the flower-rich grassland that makes up half the reserve, owned & managed by Berks, Bucks & Oxon Wildlife Trust. Park at Bledlow Ridge; more info at Yoesden | Berks Bucks & Oxon Wildlife Trust (bbowt.org.uk)

The Big Butterfly Count is the largest citizen science survey of its kind. By recording your sightings, you’ll provide valuable data on the populations and distributions of common species. Last year revealed species such as the Common Blue and Holly Blue had a good summer, with an increase in sightings of 154% and 120% from 2021 respectively.

It takes just 15 minutes and whether you’re in a park, garden or looking out of your window, taking part helps us understand UK butterflies’ plight. Some 80% of butterflies have declined since the 1970s and two thirds of common moth species have declined in the last 40 years.

Visit Big Butterfly Count (butterfly-conservation.org) to take part & Big Butterfly Count (butterfly-conservation.org) to find out more.

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Crowd-pleasing Henley Royal regatta pic!

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We love this collage by digital artist Henry Reichhold. What do you think?

This year’s Henley Regatta (2nd-7th July) galleries will feature an extraordinary collage by digital artist Henry Reichhold.

As people make their way into Henley Regatta’s Stewards enclosure they will come across a huge collage created from more than 1,500 images, and on closer inspection they will quite likely find that they are probably in it.

Covering six days of the 2023 Regatta and taking over 7,000 images, photo digital artist Henry Reichhold has put together an artwork packed with all stories that make up this iconic UK sporting event. Discover the classic ‘coxswain toss’, the trolley packed with champagne bottles, the festive pleasure boats and the rowers who race cheered on by the crowds lining the riverbank. Catch the prize giving, the packed grandstands and the leisurely strolling around the bandstand and take in the roar of a WW2 Lancaster bomber flying or the majestic Red Kite as it soars around the St Mary’s church tower. The artwork is available at the Regatta’s official shops.

Henry Reichhold was educated at Dartington College of Art and Warwick University. His interest in photography developed at a very young age and he remains as captivated with the process now as he was then. His work has always been at the cutting edge of technology from his early mobile stills and film making, 3D printed/Lidar scanning work to his current work using time-based collage photography and point cloud imaging he relentlessly pursues his fascination with pushing back the boundaries of the photographic world.

Henry worked for over 12 years at Saint Martins College of Art and his recent and ongoing work with St Paul’s Girls School’s explores the role of photography in virtual environments. His work has been seen by a global audience with a series exhibitions at Heathrow Airport, London Bridge Railway Station and other major venues including the Royal Albert Hall.

To find out more about him visit https://www.reichholdarts.com/

For more about his installation at Heathrow on until the 18th July check out the video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2B-QzkT4XVg

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Peter Adamson’s tribute to Wallingford book

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In his latest book, A Town Called Wallingford, local author Peter Adamson shares the stories that made the town

Many thanks to the many readers of Round & About who bought my previous book Landmark in Time – the World of the Wittenham Clumps. The response was so encouraging that I have now written a follow-up – A Town Called Wallingford.

Once again, I have tried to make each chapter into a story that starts in our local town but doesn’t necessarily end there – and I hope there will be a few surprises along the way.

There are stories of Alfred the Great and William the Conqueror… but also stories of internationally important, state-of-the-art enterprises in the town’s business parks. There is the story of the Wallingford blacksmith’s son who rose to be the greatest mathematician of the age… and of the small-town lawyer who became one of the most influential figures ever born in these islands. There are stories of thousand-year-old Saxon defences… but also of the ‘great coffee shop invasion’ of our town centres. Stories of the great castle that gave England the Plantagenets and the Tudors… and of an act of heroism and that averted a 20th-century disaster.

From the world of the arts, there are chapters on the four sisters who overcame Victorian prejudice to be acclaimed as Royal Academy artists… and on why Wallingford’s most famous resident and the world’s best-selling novelist is scorned by the literary critics. Plus the first in-depth investigation into an extraordinary rumour that has lingered on in the town for the last two hundred years.

A Town Called Wallingford is a tribute to small towns in general and to Wallingford in particular. And just as Landmark in Time set out to add to the pleasure of those who know and walk the Wittenham Clumps, I hope that this book will add to the interest and enjoyment of those who have grown to love Wallingford as I have over the years.

A Town Called Wallingford is available from Wallingford Bookshop and from Peter Adamson (peteradamsonwriting.com)

Peter Adamson is a winner of the Royal Society of Literature V.S.Pritchett Memorial Prize and in addition to non-fiction writing has published three novels and a collection of short stories. 

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