Budleigh Past and Present

“Forget Glastonbury next year,” reads the entry from one of its Facebook fans. “Budstock all the way... Amazing!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” Well, that was two years ago, and Budstock continues to have its thousand-plus passionate followers on sites like Facebook and MySpace. It’s still proud of its free and easy way of doing things, with its office “a tent in a field” and of course its free admission. But things are changing. This year's Budstock, the 14th, will have portaloos, on-site fire extinguishers, a security team to deal with any rowdies and an outside venue licence to meet new health and safety rules, all of which organizer Joe Holroyd found “a bit of a palaver.” Budstock Music Festival has been running for 20 years, though from time to time the effort of maintaining an annual event has simply proved too much. But on 1 August 2009 from 12.00 noon till midnight at Limekiln car park it will feature 20 of the best bands around playing on two stages for 12 solid hours...and it will...

With a growing reputation for attracting both talented young artistes and internationally celebrated performers, Budleigh’s Festival of Music and the Arts continues to be a thriving event in the South-West’s cultural calendar. Now in its fifth successful year, the Festival, supported by Michelmores Solicitors http://www.michelmores.com/ runs from 23 July – 1 August 2009, offering a wide variety of events, including live opera, evening concerts, workshops, and free lunchtime concerts including the Budstock rock festival. The Festival starts on 23 July with the superb Henschel Quartet, from Munich (pictured right) . The Quartet performs regularly in prestigious chamber music events worldwide and is a guest at numerous renowned music festivals and concert halls such as the Tanglewood Festival (USA), the BBC Proms concerts in London and the Concertgebouw, Amsterdam. They will be joined by pianist Gottlieb Wallisch (left) from Vienna. Commended for his technical brilliance and sensitive i...

[To mark the forthcoming East Devon Pebblebeds Heath Week (26-31 July 2009), the following article by Chris Tilley, Professor of Anthropology & Archaeology at University College London, celebrates the life and work of former Budleigh Salterton resident George Carter, pictured left. An archaeologist who was clearly ahead of his time, George Carter retired to live in his home town on North View Road; his unorthodox views on the pebblebeds upset many people in the local community.] George Carter is the pioneer and founding figure in the archaeology of the east Devon Pebblebeds, carrying out extensive research in the area from the early 1920s into the late 1960s. He was most active during the twenties and thirties before the outbreak of the Second World War, carrying out many excavations of pebbled mounds on Woodbury and Aylesbeare Commons and elsewhere. He did not have much time or patience with establishment archaeological ideas and positions and fell out with some of the leading arc...

Visit http://www.eastdevonaonb.org.uk/documents/HeathWeek_09events.pdf for all Heath Week events

The annual summer show staged by London-based Imperial College Operatic Society (ICOS) will be the Broadway hit Sweet Charity, which runs at the Public Hall from 29 July to 8 August 2009. Sweet Charity the musical, by Neil Simon, Dorothy Fields, and Cy Coleman, based on Federico Fellini's screenplay for Nights of Cabiria, opened in January 1966 at the Palace Theatre on Broadway. Directed and and choreographed by Bob Fosse it ran for 608 performances and was nominated for 12 Tony Awards. The show had a London production at the Prince of Wales Theatre in 1967 starring Juliet Prowse. The ICOS staging will include all the hits from the show including 'Big spender', 'If my friends could see me now', 'Rhythm of life', and 'Baby dream your dream'. ICOS was established in 1956 and has been annually touring shows to Budleigh Salterton since 1968. Every summer, around 60 members of the cast and crew visit the town. During its fortnight stay the Society present...

It’s not the same as keeping a diary, as the course organizers explain. Indeed, journaling seems to be viewed by its proponents as a high science. Even the word seems to have taken over from boring old ‘blogging’ as a term to describe what one US expert has described as one of the easiest and most powerful ways to accelerate your personal development and gain insights you’d otherwise never see. And with a growing number of opportunities to “get your thoughts out of your head and put them down in writing”, using media like Evernote, Wordpress or even the humble Blogspot that I use, it’s no surprise to find that Google lists 79,900,000 entries for ‘journaling software.’ For the week of 20-24 July 2009 Brewster teenagers will learn the basics of journaling. By combining photos and personal memories of their lives on Cape Cod, participants will create a journal of their experiences and observations. Activities will include a field trip to the beach to take pictures and write, reading excer...

It seems so right that an exhibition about Sir Walter Raleigh, famous for his pioneering efforts to colonise the New World, should take place in the village where he was born, just the day after Americans celebrate their independence on 4 July. Left: The portrait of Sir Walter Raleigh in All Saints Church, East Budleigh, where he and his family worshipped Sir Walter was certainly a monarchist when he flattered his Queen Elizabeth in all possible ways, including laying his fine cloak over that puddle so that she might not get her feet wet. Below right: The Sir Walter Raleigh pub sign in East Budleigh But many republicans like Oliver Cromwell and John Milton have also seen him as a victim of a tyrannical monarch, the Stuart King James I, who imprisoned him and then ordered his execution. Many Americans of the past saw him as a patriotic hero and defender of liberty comparable to George Washington and Theodore Roosevelt. The American navy in 1776 even named a frigate after him, ironic whe...