Aldeburgh

Tonight the virtual Aldeburgh Festival starts with Benjamin Britten on Camera on BBC4.  We once heard Britten described in what was then the Campsea Ashe Dog and Duck as That famous writer or something.

Yesterday afternoon a body was found in an Aldeburgh house and in the evening there was an armed robbery at the Fressingfield Mace Store.

We have visited (after an hiccup) Benjamin Britten's Red House just outside Aldeburgh and it's a beautiful location at the end of an unmade road.  The Red House is looking for volunteers and the garden alone would be an attraction.  Email: volunteering@brittenpears.org  Tel: 01728 451700

The Are We Good Ancestors? show at the Aldeburgh Gallery opens today and runs until Wednesday the 19th.

In association with Poetry in Aldeburgh 8-10 November three women artists Perienne Christian, Alice-Andrea Ewing and Tessa Newcomb are showing at the Peter Pears Gallery as Purslane, Peas & Bladderwrack ... no we don't know what Purslane is either.

Common Ground Theatre's comedy A Sidecar Named Despair! ends it's local run Thursday in the Aldeburgh Jubilee Hall.  Take a ride up the comedy freeway with a tale of mobsters, missing gems and a mashed-up motorbike."

Blimey!  Next month's Aldeburgh Documentary Festival has some impressive guests: him off the telly Paul Merton, her off the wireless Martha Kearney and him off the page Anthony Horowitz (we did read somewhere Horowitz has a weekend cottage in Orford).

The Aldeburgh Cinema centenary celebrating screenings on the beach today and tomorrow have been moved to the cinema because of the predicted weather.  Free tickets on the door to the first come first served.

Saturday the 29th Claire Weston and the Suffolk Singers present Summer Serenade in Aldeburgh Parish Church.  We last visited the church during the 2010 general election and slighty more recently enjoyed the Suffolk Singers in Debenham. ♫

When we were at Essex Uni for an american football final Sunday we noticed that The Mystery of the Raddlesham Mumps was playing in the campus theatre.  It's at the Aldeburgh Jubilee Hall the Saturday after next.  A fearsome but funny gothic tale of dynasty, death, revenge and hope. Lovely moral. - Michael Rosen

Public booking for this year's Aldeburgh Festival starts next Tuesday, with Antonio Pappano, Tenebrae and a boat trip on the River Orwell already  SOLD OUT .

2019 is the centenary year of Aldeburgh Cinema (Leiston pre-dates them by five years) and they will be marking it with their first Cinema on the Beach.  We've been told that Aldeburgh folk would dress up for the cinema and be greeted in the foyer by the manager wearing evening dress, a floral buttonhole and smoking a cigar ... these days celebrities don't feel the need for a tie:)

As part of Bernstein At 100 Aldeburgh Cinema is showing tonight West Side Story (the dancing is still a revelation) introduced on stage by Leonard Bernstein's biographer Humphrey Burton.