SMALL DOGS CAN SAVE YOUR LIFE
with Bel Mooney
Friday 17th September
In a beautiful and powerful memoir which mixes honest, personal revelation with literature, history, and inspirational self-help, Bel Mooney tells the story of her rescue dog, Bonnie, who in turn rescued Bel when her world fell apart with the all-too public break-up of her 35-year marriage. Small Dogs Can Save Your Life really is a story of survival, and also one of love.
Bel Mooney is one of Britain’s most successful journalists. Since 2005 she has gained a huge following as an advice columnist, first in The Times and currently in the Daily Mail. She has also worked tirelessly in recent years fundraising for the Theatre Royal.
Lunch: Coq au vin with mashed potatoes and seasonal vegetables; syrup sponge with custard; coffee.
Vegetarian option: Mushrooms, asparagus and roasted pine-nuts in a white wine cream sauce with couscous.
IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF JANE AUSTEN
Visit to Saltram House in Devon
Tuesday 21st September
Join us for this visit to the beautiful mansion which was used as Norland Park, the lost home of the Dashwood girls, in Ang Lee’s 1995 film of Sense and Sensibility. Many of the rooms, the library and the grounds feature extensively in the film. Lying on the outskirts of Plymouth in a magnificent setting overlooking the Plym Estuary, Saltram House is the largest country house in Devon. It is a classical George II building with many of the interiors designed by the most important architect of the eighteenth century, Robert Adam and it still contains many of its original contents. Our visit includes a tour of the extensive grounds comprising over 500 acres of parkland as well as a formal 18th century garden, orangery and follies and lunch may be purchased in the excellent Park Restaurant which provides hot and cold meals using fresh, local produce.
Depart 8.30am (Avon Street coach park) Return 7pm approx
£38 includes coach travel and guided tour of the garden.
Entry to house and grounds – free to NT members £7.90 on the day
Tickets available from the Theatre Royal Box Office Tel: 01225 448844
JANE AUSTEN’S THE STANHOPE SISTERS
Presented by Pink Slip Theatre
in the egg theatre
Thursday 23rd September
“I am by no means guided by a particular preference to you above your sisters, it is equally the same to me which I marry of the three.”
There is a marriage proposal which Mary, Sophia and Georgina Stanhope are all desperate to escape. Add to the mix a handsome long-lost friend and a conniving neighbour for a story filled with comedy, disaster and the triumph of love over adversity.
Six actors perform this delightful two hour long (including interval) adaptation of one of Jane Austen’s juvenilia pieces written in 1792.
Lunch: Chicken and leek pie with roasted potatoes and seasonal vegetables; bread and butter pudding with custard; coffee.
Vegetarian option: : Leek and gorgonzola tart with new potatoes and seasonal vegetables.
£14 listen only, £26.50 includes lunch.
MURDER AT MANSFIELD PARK
With Lynn Shepherd
Friday 24th September
A hugely entertaining homage, Murder At Mansfield Park offers a very different view of Mansfield Park, but retains the distinct style, eloquence and subtlety of Austen’s best writing. More mature and intelligent than other literary adaptations, and yet still a wildly entertaining whodunit in the tradition of Agatha Christie and P D James, Lynn Shepherd offers the Mansfield Park Jane Austen fans always wanted with an ambitious, scheming and relentlessly focussed heroine in a transformed Fanny Price. Lynn Shepherd is a successful copywriter and academic. This is her first novel.
Lunch: Beef and ale casserole with new potatoes and seasonal vegetables; apple crumble with cream; coffee.
Vegetarian option: Vegetable casserole with new potatoes and seasonal vegetables.
WAIT FOR ME: Memoirs
With Deborah, Dowager Duchess of Devonshire
Friday 1st October
SOLD OUT. Deborah Devonshire — Debo to her family and friends – is 90 this year and is the youngest and the last surviving of the charismatic Mitford sisters. This new volume will offer a unique insight into a fascinating life, from her childhood in Oxfordshire and marriage, her friendships with people as diverse as Lucian Freud, Evelyn Waugh, Jack Kennedy, Tom Stoppard and Alan Titchmarsh, running one of England’s greatest and best-loved houses, Chatsworth, through her many years of public service and current status as a best-selling author and national treasure. Affectionate, shrewd and uproariously funny.
Lunch: SOLD OUT.
QUEEN ELIZABETH II: A Photographic Portrait
With Philip Ziegler
Friday 15th October
This book is a photographic portrait of Queen Elizabeth II, from her first
official photograph as a baby in 1926 to her greeting President Obama at
Buckingham Palace in 2009. Bestselling historian and biographer Philip Ziegler introduces the key royal and historical events of the period, alongside the photographs which include formal poses as well as those that capture the Queen relaxing with her family and as a working monarch. The work of over twenty photographers is represented, many of whom were or are the leading portrait photographers of their generation, including Cecil Beaton, Yousef Karsh, Lord Snowdon and Jane Bown
Lunch: Pork escalope with mashed potatoes, seasonal vegetables and a mustard sauce; sticky toffee pudding with cream; coffee.
Vegetarian option: Sweet and sour vegetable filo parcel on a bed of rice with a sweet and sour sauce.
LUNCH WITH MICHAEL CAINES
at the Bath Priory Hotel
Thursday 4th November
Join us for this two-course lunch in the Priory Hotel’s restaurant hosted by executive uber-chef Michael Caines MBE. After training in France and with Raymond Blanc, Michael has been Head Chef at Gidleigh Park in Devon where he gained two Michelin stars and is now heading the team at Andrew Brownsword’s sister hotel in Bath. He will talk about his career, his meteoric rise in his profession and his near fatal car accident in which he lost his right arm in 1994.
Lunch: Braised shoulder of Hinton estate beef, horseradish mash and red wine jus; milk chocolate and hazelnut dacquoise, white chocolate ice-cream; coffee and petit fours.
Vegetarian option: Open lasagne of celeriac and wild mushroom with celeriac remoulade and cep sauce.
Wine to purchase.
Cost: £35 per head [Numbers strictly limited]
COCO CHANEL: The Legend and the Life
with Justine Picardie
Thursday 18th November
Former features director of British Vogue Justine Picardie has spent the last decade puzzling over the truth about Coco Chanel. In this full-scale biography we finally discover the incredible woman who created the way we look now. Coco Chanel was an extraordinary inventor – she conjured up the little black dress, bobbed hair, trousers for women, contemporary chic, best-selling perfumes, and the most successful fashion brand of all time – but she also invented herself, fashioning the myth of her own life with the same dexterity as her couture. While Chanel was supreme innovator and vendor of all things elegant and beautiful, what lies beneath her own glossy myth is darker.
Lunch: Fillet of salmon with a dill sauce, seasonal vegetables and new potatoes; profiteroles; coffee.
Vegetarian option: Roast vegetable Strudel with a dill cream sauce.
Literary events are presented in association with: Mr B’s Emporium of Reading Delights