Budleigh Past and Present

Professor Ivan Roots Back in 2009, the late and great Ivan Roots, Emeritus Professor of History at Exeter University, was kind enough to give a talk in Budleigh Salterton about Sir Walter Raleigh’s poetry.  The event was a prelude to a performance of ‘Even such is Time’, the cantata by local composer Nicholas Marshall which is based on one of Raleigh’s most famous poems. I wrote about Professor Roots’ talk at http://budleighbrewsterunited.blogspot.co.uk/2009/07/onion-not-potato.html and remember his conclusion that Sir Walter was ‘not a great poet’. Although Raleigh’s later poems made ‘quite good, subtle points’, he conceded, much of the early stuff was extremely conventional, ‘addressed to imaginary women like hundreds of other courtly compositions of the age’. Professor Dodsworth’s edition of the poems, entitled  Sir Walter Ralegh : The Poems, with other Verse from the Court of E...

  Sue Newcombe, manager of Budleigh Salterton's Tourist Information Centre, is delighted to be handling ticket sales for the Reg Varney tribute show BEFORE THE BUSES on Fri 1 and Sat 2 July It’s a fund-raiser for Fairlynch, but rather different from the usual events. And it’s going to raise money for two other good charities, and provide a great evening’s entertainment. Or rather, two evenings, as the show BEFORE THE BUSES is taking place on Friday 1 and Sat 2 July at 7.30 pm.   Reg Varney’s story, as those who have seen the museum’s centenary tribute exhibition will know, is impressive.   Reg Varney, aged 10, with his father. Their relationship is touchingly described in the autobiography The Little Clown A wartime birth 100 years ago; the discovery of his amazing gift as a musician and as a comic, making his way from humble beginnings in the working men’s clubs of Lon...