Latest news with #EdwardElgar
Yahoo
7 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Summer holiday family fun revealed at this National Trust property
FAMILIES have been promised a 'magical summer of play' at a National Trust property near Worcester. Summer of Fun takes place at Elgar's Birthplace, The Firs, in Lower Broadheath, near Worcester between Saturday, July 19 and Sunday, August 31. A spokesperson for the National Trust said: "This summer, families are invited to step into a world of musical imagination at Elgar's Birthplace, where the National Trust is bringing Edward Elgar's Wand of Youth Suite to life through a playful and interactive experience for children and families. "Running throughout the school summer holidays, the Summer of Play offer transforms the historic grounds into a vibrant adventure trail inspired by the enchanting movements of Elgar's youthful composition." With seven themed activity stations, children can explore scenes straight from the music, including: Fairies and Giants – Climb into a giant's chair, perch in a bird's nest, or discover tiny fairy houses hidden among the trees. The Tame Bear – Bring along your favourite teddy and create your own teddy bears' picnic in the idyllic cottage garden. Wild Bears – Join the Wild Bears Band and become a musician. Use everyday objects and nature-based instruments to create your own rhythm and soundscape. A National Trust spokesperson said: "Other whimsical worlds from the suite brought to life through creative play, nature, and imagination. "This unique experience encourages families to connect with Elgar's music in a hands-on way, blending the magic of childhood with the legacy of one of England's greatest composers." Ellen Cooper, Site Manager at the National Trust, said: "We're thrilled to offer families a chance to engage with Elgar's music through play. "The Wand of Youth Suite was inspired by Elgar's own childhood imagination, and we're excited to bring that spirit to life for a new generation."
Telegraph
21-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
The ‘diabolical' BBC drama that inspired 28 Years Later
Landing in the BBC One schedules one Thursday evening in March 1974, Penda's Fen sat oddly. For those viewers who had earlier watched Tony Blackburn host Top of the Pops, or caught up with Are You Being Served? here was a completely different beast. It was peculiar – even by the standards of the channel's prestigious Play for Today slot, within which it sat. After all, the film set up a battle between the forces of Light and Dark, individualism and conservatism, on the Malvern Hills – all played out through the eyes of a priggish adolescent. Few who saw it would have gone to bed without its succession of extraordinary, terrifying visions haunting their dreams – visions which, if director Danny Boyle is to be believed, 'left an extraordinary impression on me'. At the age of seventeen much of it went over his head but he knew that night it was an 'incredible film' and when he eventually moved into television in the late Eighties, its director Alan Clarke was the first person he contacted. Small wonder, too, that Boyle's latest film, 28 Years Later, a zombie horror set in Northumberland, feels like a direct successor to the eerie rural imagery of Penda's Fen. The film is the story of a vicar's son, Stephen Franklin (Spencer Banks), a hidebound teenager whose comfortable, complacent assumptions about his world crumble one by one. He is visited by demons and angels, meets the ghost of his idol Edward Elgar, sees a church aisle splitting to reveal a giant bottomless chasm, is spoken to by Jesus on the cross, and witnesses the arrival of the seventh-century King Penda – the last pagan king of Mercia. Like a modern-day Piers Plowman, each visitor tells Franklin a truth that he must assimilate – and which shakes his conservative, little-Englander views. The film's cry of individualism and the radical spirit has reverberated for over 50 years. Long before 'Rooster' Byron, the whirling, maverick force at the heart of Jez Butterworth's Jerusalem, Penda Fen's found uncanny, romantic resistance in the depths of the British countryside. This 'film for television' was created by playwright David Rudkin, who had built his reputation with Afore Night Come for the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1962. This set out his stall as a writer of dark power and originality, depicting fruit-pickers at an orchard descending into savagery after a helicopter sprays them with pesticide. Rudkin himself resisted any connection to the then-burgeoning genre of 'folk horror'. But today it's hard not to view Rudkin's obsession with England's deep past, elemental forces, and his environmental fears as being in the same lineage as The Wicker Man (1973), John Bowen's 1970 film Robin Redbreast (known as 'Britain's Rosemary's Baby') and the occult fiction of Dennis Wheatley. It was the mood of the times. A queasy pastoralism – which looks ever more prescient in our era of climate fears – haunts Penda's Fen. Yet it is more than that: throughout the film, there's a constant sense that some religious, mystical force is about to erupt from the pregnant landscape. The true miracle is that it was ever broadcast at all. By 1971, Rudkin was struggling to get his increasingly difficult work staged; he also felt abandoned by television. That summer, though, producer David Rose came calling. He had enjoyed success with the launch of the police drama Z-Cars in the 1960s and had recently moved to the BBC's Pebble Mill studios in Birmingham. He wanted to put on new stories and Rudkin was high on his list. Penda's Fen was commissioned a year later. Rose, who went on to set up Film on Four, always regarded it as his proudest achievement. 'It's an extraordinary piece of work,' he told me. 'My mother never spoke to me about my programmes, but she was haunted for nights by Penda's Fen.' Spencer Banks – who played the film's adolescent hero – was familiar to many viewers from the hugely successful children's sci-fi series Timeslip. But his step into peak-time 'serious' drama was challenging. When Banks first went up for the part of Stephen, he never saw a script during auditions. He remembers his father sat at the kitchen table, checking over the contract. 'Oh, here's a clause you don't see very often,' he said. 'The actor agrees to be set on fire.' It was daunting for an 18-year-old to communicate this otherworldly journey into adulthood and – as Dennis Potter put it in his review for the New Statesman – 'the images of light and darkness warring in the young man's mind'. In early rehearsals, Banks recalls he was 'confused and a little lost,' but in the end, 'I quite simply put all my faith in the director, Alan Clarke. Which I think is the reason we got the result that we did.' In commissioning the drama, Rose put together a writer and director who were chalk and cheese. Alan Clarke cut his teeth at ITV but was now firmly part of the BBC drama department. Today, his reputation is built on the violent and gritty Scum and Made in Britain – which, in their concern with broken, brutish young men, prefigure shows like Adolescence. But Clarke's early work tended to be naturalistic, contemporary and not as focused on vicious young men. Such a down-to-earth style was at odds with Rudkin's poeticism. At their first meeting, Rudkin was told by the director that this was 'a heavy number. How many books do I have to read to understand this?' 'Just the one,' replied Rudkin, pointing to the script in his hand. In the end, their two visions gelled. The film's fantastic imaginings have their power because they are presented as real, almost ordinary, which makes them all the more disturbing. Achieving this pulsing otherness was the next challenge. The shoot – much of it done outdoors – was an enormous operation, and the weather was a constant challenge. Actor Ian Hogg, who played local firebrand playwright Arne – the man who sparks Stephen's turn towards pastoral deep England – remembers how 'it rained when it shouldn't almost always'. The director began to take it personally. One sodden day, he asked his production manager, 'If I strip to the waist and thrash about in the mud, do you think [God] will forgive me and send some sunshine?' The crew's base camp was Chaceley, a village near Tewkesbury whose population even today is just a little over a hundred. The rectory, which doubled as Stephen's childhood home, was the location for a number of scenes, including the visit of a demon. As Stephen tosses and turns in the throes of an erotic dream about a fellow schoolboy, a terrifying, gargoyle-like incubus kneels on top of Stephen as he sleeps. In another scene straight from William Blake, an angel appears to Stephen on a riverbank. Make-up designer Jan Nethercot recalls having to create a convincing heavenly visitation. Painting the actor gold, there was a worry he would asphyxiate if they failed to leave a small part of the skin uncovered. 'We'd seen Goldfinger,' she recalls. The marshland that day was misty. Jan's assistant, Penny Gough, remembers how the light caused a radiance on the paint: 'The gold from his wingtips went right up into the mist and it was spectacular.' A further unforgettable image is of a man in a dinner jacket and bow-tie, standing by a tree stump on a garden lawn, as he uses a meat cleaver to cut off the hands of children in front of their devout parents. It's a queer, disturbing comment on subjugation – and vividly traumatising. The scene is presented as some ghastly, jubilant ritual, the victims rejoicing in their missing limbs. Filming the scene, Clarke's main worry was whether the BBC would allow a crew to put any child in this situation. Costume designer Joyce Hawkins promptly volunteered her daughter, who is herself now a television producer. 'It's a wonder I wasn't personally traumatised,' says Caroline Hawkins. 'Or maybe I was, who knows?' Almost five million people watched Penda's Fen on its first transmission. Callers to the duty log described it as 'horrific' and 'approaching black magic'. One said it was 'diabolical' and promised they 'will be writing to someone very important', but hadn't decided who it would be. Those making it knew that the film was special – but none would have expected it to become as deeply embedded in the public consciousness. What brought it back from obscurity was a repeat on Channel 4 in 1990, just two days before the director Clarke's death. A new generation taped it and, slowly, Penda's Fen entered the canon, leading to books, music, cinema screenings and even academic conferences. The film also left its mark on English filmmakers like Mark Jenkin (Enys Men) and Ben Wheatley (A Field in England). And, of course, Danny Boyle. At the time, though, the film was too singular to get a common reaction. Like a message in a bottle, it went out into the world and, as with the most lasting works of art, connected to the present moment. It touches on education, defence, the environment, paganism and English traditions – but also has characters who are non-binary. (Indeed, the film's climax sees Stephen proclaim to the Wiltshire downs: 'My race is mixed, my sex is mixed, I am woman and man… I am mud and flame!') Speaking last year, Rudkin recalled a postbag filled with correspondents who said they had 'some inner place it reached that nothing else had.' More than 50 years on, Penda's Fen continues to find viewers' souls – and shake them. Penda's Fen: Scene by Scene by Ian Greaves is published by Ten Acre Films on June 23. Spencer Banks will appear at a screening hosted by the Barbican Centre in London on September 6. The film is available to buy on DVD and Blu-ray from the BFI.
The Guardian
18-06-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Few men can really rock a moustache. Timothée Chalamet is not one of them
What is it with all these wispy moustaches suddenly decorating young men's faces? These things, which have crawled their way on to so many upper lips, aren't fully formed moustaches. There's no depth to them. They're straggly, patchy, with skin showing through them. They look as though their owners aren't fully committed to them. Or, worse, that they are trying their best, but this apology of a moustache is all they can manage. It's the kind of moustache you grow when puberty first makes it possible to do so, the debut facial hair with which you aim to convince publicans that you're old enough to be served alcohol. The only thing I can say in their favour is that they are at least equal opportunity moustaches, in that even those who can't muster much in the way of facial hair can have a fair crack at producing one of these. But otherwise, my firm view on moustaches, for the infinitesimally little it's worth, is to go big or go home. I'm working on a documentary about Sir Edward Elgar. Now that's what I call a moustache. Full, bushy, yet neat. A veritable symphony of bristle. It may be that spending so much time with Sir Edward lately is what led me to suddenly start seeing these miserable creepy-crawlies sullying faces everywhere. Initially, I felt a bit sorry for their owners. I took it they were doing it for a charity thing and, even though they plainly looked crap, were sticking with it in aid of a good cause. Respect. But I checked my calendar, and it turns out we're in the month of June, not Movember. Could it be, could it really be, that they think these things look good? It would seem to be so. I sought confirmation that this rubbishy apology of a moustache has been confirmed as an actual trend. And, if so, who started it, when and why? I asked everyone I know who is trendier and more trend-aware than I am, which is almost everyone I know. So I narrowed the cohort down to various dandies of my acquaintance, my daughters, their friends, and anyone I got within range of who happened to be in their late teens or 20s. A consensus soon emerged that the sporting of these awful 'taches is indeed a thing. But getting to the root cause of this troubling trend is quite the challenge. No sooner do you think you've got there than someone pops up insisting it goes back a lot further than that. I was sent a piece from the Cut, part of New York magazine, describing it thus: 'It's petite, it's well-groomed, and like its wearer, it's decidedly queer: the skinny mustache.' Pardoning the American spelling there, I read on with interest. It was good to know I was on to something with writers as on-trend as this. Then I checked the date: 2019. I'm just six years behind the curve, then – quite good for me. And one thing's for sure: this trend is now close to its end. Because if a trend has become entrenched enough for my dopey ungroomed self to notice it, then it has surely peaked and the end is nigh. For example, when I was at school there was a phase when all the other boys, as if by some agreement made behind my back, started wearing shoes called Pods. But my mum had just bought me some other new school shoes and wouldn't hear a word about this Pods business. I kept on at her, but by the time I'd begged her to buy me some, everyone else – again by some secret agreement, apparently – had ditched their Pods and moved on. And I got laughed at for wearing them. There you go, confessions of a failed dandy. Anyway, this piece out of New York reports a Brooklyn barber saying of this 'mustache' that 'its two most crucial descriptors are subtle and understated'. Obviously, having applied other adjectives, I snorted at this, but reading on I started worrying I was getting into some culturally sensitive areas. A point is made about it all being a legacy of the 1960s, when lip fuzz was seen as a form of rebellion against authority, particularly military masculinity. And this new wispy 2019 version is said to have a 'whiff of deviancy' about it. I don't doubt it for a moment but, six years on, if every other young dude on the tube is wearing one, the deviancy has surely been diluted. So what we're seeing now is probably a revival of something from six years ago that was itself a revival of something significant that started 60 years ago. Fascinating. But I'm sorry, I still think they look crap. It was a photograph of Benson Boone, the American singer, that started me on all this. It seems you can draw a direct line back from him, via Paul Mescal and Harry Styles, to Timothée Chalamet, upon whose face one of these aberrations appeared last year. Interestingly, if you think about it, that acute accent in Timothée's name might be said to resemble one half of his trendsetting 'tache. Anyway, I'm indebted to one of my Guardian colleagues for sharing with me an article about it from Vogue – not a publication I generally read. It says that Chalamet's wispy whiskers are 'not so much a symbol of masculine gruff as a free agent coming of age'. I've no idea what that means but it sounds about right, even though I've a better theory: noting that Styles, Mescal and Boone all followed where Timothée led, it struck me that what these chaps have in common is the feverish sexual desire they excite in millions of people. This must get a bit tedious after a while, so I wonder if they're wearing these terrible 'taches to try to make themselves less attractive? A clever move, gentlemen, if I may say so, though it doesn't seem to have worked. The whole world's still hot for the lot of you. And boys everywhere, poor deluded souls, thinking your magic resides in your bumfluff, are now all at it. This must stop. They look awful. Fellas, either grow a proper one. Or get rid. Adrian Chiles is a broadcaster, writer and Guardian columnist Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.
Yahoo
05-06-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Graduation 2025: 'A very impressive group'
Roll out the pomp and dust off the circumstance: Beginning today at 6 p.m., approximately 721 young adults will graduate at high schools across Crawford County as Edward Elgar's Pomp and Circumstance March No. 1 fills stadiums, auditoriums and gymnasiums with the sounds of stately elegance. The festivities begin with the three PENNCREST School District high schools, all of which have their indoor ceremonies at 6. 'They are a very impressive group,' Principal Erica Howick said of the 73 graduates at Saegertown Junior-Senior High. 'They're just generally nice kids — they work hard, try hard and support each other. ... They made this year very easy.' Approximately 80 seniors will mark their symbolic entry into the 'real world' of adulthood as they cross the stage in the gymnasium at Maplewood Junior-Senior High, where Principal Dana Mason is wrapping up his first year at the school. Describing them as easy to work with and 'always happy to see you,' Mason will be sorry to see the seniors move on. 'I was overwhelmingly impressed with the reception they gave me and the way they treated me as a newcomer to their building their last year of school,' he said Wednesday. 'They could've been cold to me and could have wished that my predecessor was still here for their last year, but you would have never guessed that I was the new guy in the building. They were very welcoming.' At Cambridge Springs Junior-Senior High, 51 seniors will begin the day in their regalia as they walk to the school down Venango Avenue, with family, friends and community members lining the street. In the evening, the excitement moves to the auditorium for the graduation ceremony. The school is a busy place this week, according to Principal Kylene Koper, as staff members are working in the background to transfer nearly everything movable in the building into the gym by Friday in preparation for another summer of extensive renovations. Like the school itself, Koper said on Tuesday, the soon-to-be graduates are mostly ready. 'I always miss the kids once they leave. Certain kids,' she continued, 'it is definitely different without them in the building, but because we're so small, many find their way back to visit or help out in other areas. Like yesterday at the softball game — you'll see tons of graduated kids at those type of things.' A little later this evening, about 147 seniors will graduate at the Conneaut Area Senior High (CASH) football field. The 7:30 start time for the CASH ceremony has a lot to do with the outdoor setting. 'Basically, it's about the sun being in everyone's face if we do it outside,' Principal Ed Pietroski said. 'The 7:30 start time gets the sun over the tree line better.' The event is just as fantastic inside, he added, but if inclement weather seems a possibility, a final decision on location will be postponed as late as possible. Like the seniors who will receive their diplomas, 2025 marks the fourth year at CASH for both Pietroski and his fellow principal Matt Vannoy. 'They're a special group for Mr. Vannoy and myself — our first year at CASH was this graduating group's freshman year,' Pietroski said. 'They're the first group that's gone through with us a full four years. That's always a group you remember.' An emphasis during those four years has been to offer multiple pathways that allow students to prepare for life after high school, according to Pietroski. 'It's a group that is going to do a lot of really great things as they move on with their lives,' he said. On Friday, the ceremonies continue at 6 p.m. in the county's southeastern corner, where 133 Titusville High seniors will graduate at Carter Field. In the event of inclement weather, the ceremony will shift to the gymnasium. At the same time in Meadville, approximately 173 seniors will graduate at Bender Field. Concerns about the weather are Principal John Higgins' biggest source of stress in the countdown to the big event. 'You can't trust this northwest PA weather,' he said. A final call on the location for the event will be posted by 4 p.m. today, he added. If a move inside is necessary, the ceremony will take place in the gym. 'We're hoping to keep it outside — if you could say a prayer for us,' he added with an eye on a forecast that had dropped from a 75 percent chance of rain to a 60 percent chance. 'We've got our fingers crossed.' Whatever the location, Higgins was optimistic about a group of students he described as 'resilient' and ready for the challenges they will face. 'They're going to surprise us,' he said. 'They're going to change the way we do things.' Crawford County graduation season winds up with a 7 p.m. start in the gymnasium at Cochranton Junior-Senior High, where 64 seniors are expected to cross the stage to collect their diplomas. It's a moment years in the making that often can't seem to arrive quickly enough for those about to don their mortarboards. Some who have seen these moments play out numerous times, however, suspect that it won't be long before nostalgia sets in. 'It's always nice to be able to reconnect and see how adult life is treating them,' Koper, the Cambridge Springs principal, said of recent grads. 'They're always like, 'You were right, we should've not tried to grow up so fast. High school was better than adulthood.' And I go, 'Yeah, I told you that.'' The lesson learned is one that might be appropriate for a commencement address. 'You think it's so bad when you're in high school,' Koper continued. 'Your whole life you want to grow up, but then when you grow up, you wish you could go back to being a kid.'
Times
03-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Times
Elgar is the soundtrack to VE Day celebrations — this is his story
With his magnificent moustache, tweed suit and noble air, Edward Elgar looked every inch the proper English gentleman of his day. And as the composer of the Pomp and Circumstance March No 1 — from which comes Land of Hope and Glory, now almost an unofficial national anthem — his music seemed to sum up the spirit of an all-conquering imperial Britain, full of rousing sentiment and flag-waving patriotism. It'll 'knock 'em flat', Elgar boasted of his stirring tune. Here was, at long last, a great British composer to rival Purcell, who gave voice to a proud nation and a swaggering empire. Elgar's flair for pageantry and pomposity served him well. In 1897 he wrote an Imperial March for Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee; in
