News

Mother and daughter duo, Fiona and Hannah, enthralled their audience at the Town Hall on Wednesday with their magically stories reminiscent of the Arabian Nights. Characters and themes threaded through the performance as Fiona and Hannah held us transfixed with just their voices, plus an offering of freshly baked bread! An entertaining and thought-provoking contribution to Nailsworth Festival.

There was a full house last night for Helen Ingham’s talk at Egypt Mill about her life dressing and working with the stars. Helen had lots of photos and scripts from the films she has been involved in which she welcomed the audience to pore through – and they did! Her talk had lots of stories about wardrobe incidents, turning costumes around quickly, providing Hugh Grant with dry Y fronts, making Maggie Smith a cup of tea after a morning in a wheatfield, how Madonna lost a Cartier bracelet in the Mediterranean and throwing a bucket of cold water over Tom Cruise!

Helen spoke to lots of audience members afterwards. Some of the feedback included:

“My goodness that was brilliant – well worth coming from Cheltenham for!”

“I loved all the stories – it must have been amazing to be up close and personal with the stars.”

“So glad I live in Nailsworth and can walk to an event like this.”

“We wish our niece could have come – she worked in wardrobe on The Crown – so interesting to hear about what her life must be like.”

“Can Helen come back and speak next year? I know lots of people who wanted to come but couldn’t because it was sold out”.

Those of us who attended this year’s classical concert witnessed a quite remarkable session of chamber music playing – one of the very best classical performances we have had at the festival in its 41 years. As BBC New Generation artists, they were expected to be good, but nothing prepared us for the dynamism they injected into their performance. They began with Haydn. Often, performances of Haydn have a mannered 18th Century feel to them, but this was defintively 21st Century Haydn. The Christ Church classic Broadwood piano was made to produce sounds we have never heard from it before, more like those of a modern instrument. The dynamism continued with a Mendelssohn trio, but the second half of the concert, featuring French music from circa 1900, went into a contrasting landscape of broad imprssionistic harmonies. And there was a delightful encore of an Argentinian dance. Do watch out for this trio as their career progresses. The only snag is that the committee will find it hard to stage something even better next year. But they will try.

This press release has been prepared for the Nailsworth News …

In these dark days of winter, it is good to look forward to what’s coming up in the new year. So here’s some news about this year’s Festival. We’re pleased to announce that Dom Joly, the creator of Trigger Happy TV, will be headlining Nailsworth Festival for 2025. The Festival starts on Saturday 17th May, with plenty of entertainment for all the family in and around Mortimer Gardens. Across the following week the Festival will also include classical music from the Mithras Trio; a talk on Cotswold Dinosaurs; music from around the world with Phillip Clouts Quartet and blues from Ken Wood & the Mixers. There will also be a talk about dressing the stars in the British film Industry and many other things happening across the week.