Albums: The ReytonsA Love Letter To A Broken Town
While plenty of guitar bands spend their careers trying to escape the streets that shaped them, the Rotherham four-piece keep running back towards them, armed with loud guitars, sharp observations and a chorus designed to be screamed back by several thousand people.
"We Didn't Destroy The Songs": Tania Doko On Bachelor Girl's Bold Reinvention
I first met Bachelor Girl in person back when I lived in Melbourne, an experience that, if I'm being completely honest, excited my inner teenager rather more than was probably necessary. It was wonderfully surreal sitting down over coffee with Tania Doko and James Roche, having spent years knowing their music, while also photographing them for the interview.
The Suitability Of Love: No Fond Return Of Love By Barbara Pym
This book came recommended to me by another lover of reading. It is so good to be offered something you might not pick up yourself.
Albums: Wine Lips TV Dinner
There are nods throughout TV dinners to some of the originators, like The Ramones, and Leech sounds like a track that’s a love child of The Runaways. Wine Lips may have taken a good swig from some of these early punk and garage bands, but they have updated things from their own world view and produced a thoroughly modern, whip-smart album of chaotically infectious fuzzy punk. The album should come with a word of warning, however – don’t listen to TV Dinner whilst having a TV dinner; things are likely to get messy very quickly.
Classical Music: Donna McKevitt O Vos Omnes
Nearly five minutes is all it takes. Donna McKevitt's new single, released yesterday on Delphian Records, takes a single motet and turns it into something entirely its own.
Few Renaissance composers still speak to us as urgently as Carlo Gesualdo, whose harmonic daring and emotional rawness sound startlingly modern four centuries on. That is exactly the quality McKevitt has tapped into with O vos.
Classical Music: Phillip Cooke Organ Music
Regent's new disc of Phillip Cooke's solo organ music, recorded on the celebrated organ at Blackburn Cathedral, is rich in colour and atmosphere. Cooke, who grew up amid the fells and changeable light of the Lake District, writes music that seems to capture that landscape rather than describe it, and Ed Jones, at the console, treats the Blackburn organ less as an accompanist to that memory than as its co-author.
In That Pen There Is Great Power — Hannah Khalil On Writing The Farmer's Wife
Ahead of the world premiere of The Farmer's Wife at Theatre by the Lake, playwright Hannah Khalil talks to Andrew Palmer about writing three generations of Cumbrian farming women into being. When Theatre by the Lake asked Hannah Khalil whether she might make a stage version of Helen Rebanks' The Farmer's Wife, her first instinct was to say no.
Whitby Lit Fest Unveils Star-Studded Programme
John Boyne, Ann Cleeves, Si King, Joanne Harris, Mark Billingham, Greta Scacchi, Corinne Bailey Rae and Dr Sian Williams are heading to Whitby The town that inspired Bram Stoker's Dracula and has fired the imaginations of generations of writers is preparing to welcome some of the biggest names in books for the 2026 Whitby Lit Fest.
Mari Wilson: Girl About Town
With a career spanning four and a half decades, Mari Wilson has done rather a lot. There have been chart hits, jazz clubs, musical theatre, a skyscraper beehive, a twelve-piece band, and more than a few famous faces along the way. Now, the Neasden Queen of Soul is back with Girl About Town, her first album of original material in more than a decade.
Pet Shop Boys' Neil Tennant Leads Star-Studded Durham Book Festival Line-up Celebrating Stories Forged In The North
Durham Book Festival’s 2026 line-up features some of the UK's most exciting writers, thinkers, performers and broadcasters exploring literature, politics, history, music, and poetry.
Exploring The Power Of Mind Over Matter
What makes the human imagination so powerful, who shapes our view of the world, and why are we so fascinated by the supernatural? Raworths Salon North explores these questions and much more when it returns this autumn.
Robert Wolfe Plays The Magnificent Wurlitzer At Victoria Hall, Saltaire
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The Cinema Organ Society is delighted to welcome back one of Britain's finest theatre organists, Robert Wolfe, for a concert on the magnificent Wurlitzer at Victoria Hall, Saltaire, on Sunday 13th September, at 2.30pm. Robert's love affair with the theatre organ began on a childhood family holiday to Blackpool, where a single visit to the famous Tower Ballroom sparked a lifelong passion.
Blackpool 80s Weekender: Two Days of Pure Nostalgia
If you still believe the 1980s produced some of the greatest pop music of all time, then Blackpool is the place to be this September. The Blackpool 80s Weekender arrives at the iconic Winter Gardens on Friday 25 and Saturday 26 September 2026, bringing together a stellar line-up of artists who helped define the soundtrack of the decade.
Young People In Leeds Invited To Take Part In National Filmmaking Competition
Children and teenagers from Leeds are being invited to film a message to their future selves as part of a new national filmmaking competition launched by the Pauline Quirke Academy of Performing Arts (PQA).
Something For Everyone: Lakefest Hits Its Stride At 15
There are festivals that are built around one particular genre, one particular demographic or one particular headline act. Then there is Lakefest — a festival that seems determined to offer something for everyone.
Citizens Of Nowhere: Journeys Of Hope - The Letters Of Meyer And Sonia By Alison Marshall
Alison Marshall’s capturing of a circuitous historical journey between Russia, South Africa and the UK embodies, almost by definition, a testament of first-hand witness: following in the footsteps of her grandparents, by means of a long correspondence conducted over several pre-war months, Marshall painstakingly pieces together an unbreakable relationship whose strength brokers the pain…
Ed O’Donnell, The Doyen Of Leeds Jazz
Over many years I have interviewed countless jazzmen (and a few women), who have given me pleasure by the music they played and the gusto or sensitivity with which they played it. One stands out from the rest because he was completely different. In all I interviewed him five times, three at home and two after a gig. Amazingly, he never repeated himself, his fund of anecdotes endless.
Albums: The Strokes - Reality Awaits
For a band that practically wrote the blueprint for 21st-century indie rock, The Strokes has always seemed oddly uncomfortable with nostalgia. Reality Awaits, the long-awaited seventh album, doesn't try to recreate the leather-jacket cool of Is This It or simply extend the sleek melancholy of The New Abnormal
Albums: Role Model Chuck Timely & The Hourglass
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Before his breakthrough hit Sally, When the Wine Runs Out, Role Model often felt like an artist still searching for his identity. That song changed everything, pairing effortless charm with sharp songwriting, and Chuck Timely & The Hourglass proves it was no fluke. Rather than simply chasing the success of his biggest hit to date, Role Model uses it as a springboard for an album that feels more confident, more adventurous and, ultimately, more complete.
Art - Task Or Pleasure
Colin Neville is the curator of the website Not Just Hockney. As I am featured in his list of artists on this website, he kindly informed me recently about a very interesting gentleman called Thomas Ablett. I immediately felt a connection to this artist.
Classical Music: De Profundis: Choral Works by Parry and Elgar
Signum pairs two composers who rarely feel like strangers to one another, and this disc makes the case for their kinship well. Parry's De Profundis — a large-scale, twelve-part setting of Psalm 130 — dominates proceedings, its long arc from penitence to consolation still capable of catching a listener off guard more than a century on. God Is Our Hope and Strength offers a shorter but no less confident companion piece, while Elgar supplies the disc's more intimate corners: the partsong The Snow and the folk-inflected Scenes from the Bavarian Highlands, both far removed from the pomp he's better known for.
Classical Music: Scenes From Finland
The Oulu Sinfonia are the real stars of this cycle: precise, accurate, never once caught fumbling for a note, with woodwind and strings that make light and melody of everything put in front of them.
Four composers, one landscape, and not a single weak link in the chain — Sibelius would probably approve of the company he's keeping
Exploding Flowers On Tour
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Exploding Flowers has often found itself mentioned alongside revered names such as Big Star, The Soft Boys and the many bands associated with New Zealand's legendary Flying Nun Records. Rather than shy away from those comparisons, the band embraces them.
‘Iconic’ Theakston Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival Celebrates Record Visitor Numbers
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The Theakston Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival celebrated significant audience growth with record numbers of crime fiction fans from across the UK, Europe, the US and beyond flocking to the Old Swan Hotel, Harrogate to enjoy more than 34 events with 140 authors over four days, 23-26 July.
London City Ballet Return To York Theatre Royal With Firebird
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Recently nominated as Best Independent Company at the upcoming National Dance Awards 2026, London City Ballet will be back at York Theatre Royal this Autumn with a new programme of work (18-19 Sep) - including a co-production with York Theatre Royal of Glen Tetley’s Firebird.
Harrogate Comedy Festival Celebrates 17 Years Of Bringing Britain's Biggest Laughs To Yorkshire
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Harrogate Theatre is preparing to welcome some of the biggest names in comedy as Harrogate Comedy Festival returns this autumn with another outstanding programme of stand-up, improv, storytelling and family entertainment.
2026 Mercury Prize ‘Albums Of The Year’ Revealed
The Utilita Arena will host October's ceremony, with Sam Fender's home city welcoming back Britain and Ireland's most prestigious album prize — Andrew Palmer reports. Newcastle will once again take centre stage for British and Irish music this autumn, as the Mercury Prize confirmed the city will host its 2026 Awards Show on Thursday 22nd October at the Utilita Arena.
Annie: Pinning Today’s Hopes And Dreams On A Brighter Tomorrow
Like the 1982 film, the current version of Annie is based on a feisty, eleven year old orphan with an unwavering belief that her parents will return for her – and her life will be transformed forever.
A Right Royal Handbagging In Scarborough
Moira Buffini's Olivier Award-winning Handbagged is a witty, intelligent and sharply-observed political comedy which imagines the private conversations between Queen Elizabeth II and Margaret Thatcher during the latter's eleven years as Prime Minister.
1980s Soundtrack In Conversation With Tom Bailey
Few artists are as closely associated with the soundtrack of the 1980s as Tom Bailey. As the frontman of the Thompson Twins, he helped define an era with a string of timeless synth-pop classics, yet his relationship with that legacy has always been measured rather than nostalgic.