What a feast of literary events from award winning White Rose Book Café in this month of February. Such a great example of an independent bookshop, and the cakes are great too.

Following on from the highly successful Ann Cleeves evening the BookCafe is featuring a monthly  spotlight on a particular genre, author, or selection of titles that take their interest – or why not make a suggestion of your own?

This month they are featuring New Crime Writers on the bloc, as recommended by Ann Cleeves (can’t get much better than that).

Emma Flint – Little Deaths. Abir Mukherjee – A RisingMan, Jane Harper – The Dry, Mick Heron – Slow Horses.

All of which are in stock from 2^nd February.

Poetry is not being ignored. Why not head for Sofas in the Café everyThursday from 8^th February. Just bring along a poem, explain why you chose it and read it aloud. I think I’d choose Vernon Scannell’s Walking Wounded which resonates profoundly, especially as I founded and run the charity, Words for the Wounded, which raises money for wounded and unwell veterans through providing opportunities for aspiring writers.

Timing: 2pm for 30 minutes.It’s FREE

Children’s Story Time is on Fridays, at 10 – 10.30. For pre-school children, and again this is FREE

Valentine’s Special in the café is Red Velvet Hot Chocolate or White Chocolate and Raspberry milkshake.

Can it get any better? Well yes, lovely Thirsk is playing host to the equally lovely Joanna Trollope on 21 February at 7.30 St Mary’s Church. The entry is £10 redeemable against a signed hardback copy of Joanna’s latest book An Unsuitable Match.

Tickets: 01845 524353 email: sales@whiterosebooks.co.uk

Margaret Graham also writes as Milly Adams for Arrow. Penguin/Random House UK.

OK, Bye – The Vaults, Leake Street, London SE1 7NN

A busy times in the theatre world as winter begins to fade – oh please…

Following an award-winning run at VAULT Festival 2017 with A Year From Now, RedBellyBlack Theatre returns with the world premiere of OK, Bye – a fierce and fresh take on saying goodbye.

Whether you are saying goodbye to a person, an addiction or a place, everything you part ways with is concluded by the final farewell ‘OK, Bye’. Using their signature combination of physical theatre and dynamic storytelling, RedBellyBlack explores the very simple premise that saying ‘OK, Bye’ can mean thousands of different things: ‘I love you’, ‘I’m sorry’, ‘I never want to see your stupid face again’ or even just the end of a phone call. Using live music, lip syncing and movement, this production showcases raw, real-life stories from the general public.

Director Vicki Baron comments, I am absolutely thrilled that the first production of OK, Bye will be part of the VAULT Festival 2018. Quite frankly, I am giddy about staging my work there again. We had an amazing experience at VAULTS last year because this festival has everything that brings out the best in our work: supportive audiences, wonderful production staff and an inspired programme of events. The Vaults always champions the very best that London fringe theatre has to offer and I cannot wait to be part of this exciting event all over again.

RedBellyBlack Theatre describe their style as theatrical tapas, taking the best of their resources and using them to make intimate, all-encompassing theatre. This includes tales from their own lives, writing, improvisation, music and movement.

Beautifully honest…storytelling at its most unlimited (London Theatre1 – A Year From Now 2017).

Title OK, Bye

Performance Dates Wednesday 7th – Sunday 11th March 2018 Wednesday – Sunday, 7:45pm Saturday matinee, 3:15pm

Running time 60 minutes

Twitter @Red_Belly_Black, #okbyeshow

Location VAULT Festival, The Vaults, Leake Street, London SE1 7NN

How to get there The Vaults are located underneath Waterloo station (on the Northern, Bakerloo and Jubilee lines). Leave Waterloo Station via Exit 1. Turn right onto Station Road Approach and keep on the right hand side of the road. Walk all the way to the bottom of the road and go down the first set of stairs you come to and turn right at the bottom of the stairs. The entrance to the VAULT Festival is 10 meters down the graffiti tunnel on the right hand side.

Box Office Tickets are available priced £8 from http://www.vaultfestival.com/.

Guildhall Art Gallery, Guildhall Yard, London EC2V 5AR Date: Friday 16th February 2018, 7pm – 10pm

Exhibition dates: Thursday 7th September 2017 – Monday 2nd April 2018

Guildhall Art Gallery is offering an alternative Valentine’s Day experience, inviting you to celebrate something that we all have in common: life and death. Inspired by the core themes in Nature Morte, this Late event promises an enjoyable night of music, art, drawing, and cocktails.

There’s to be a Victorian entertainment show, with a variety of activities (including still life drawing, flower pressing or tote bag making) and hear a talk about ‘ethical’ taxidermy with Jazmine Miles-Long. DJ Museum of Vinyl’s life and death-inspired playlist will provide the soundtrack to the evening.

Nature Morte, one of the largest exhibitions ever presented by the City of London Corporation at Guildhall Art Gallery, illustrates how leading artists of the 21st century have reinvigorated still life. With over 100 pieces from different disciplines going beyond the two-dimensional, including sculpture, digital, and sound, Nature Morte displays works by artists including Mat Collishaw, Michael Craig-Martin, Gabriel Orozco and Marc Quinn.

Elizabeth Scott, Head of Guildhall Art Gallery & London’s Roman Amphitheatre, said, Nature Morte celebrates the age-old themes of life and death and yet, when you reflect on these themes, love isn’t very far away. Life, death and love go hand in hand, and what better way to explore these themes than an alternative Valentine’s Day Late that celebrates the romantic, morbid and life-affirming?

The events programme includes :

Talk on ‘ethical’ taxidermy with Jazmine Miles-Long (7pm and 8.15pm, Basinghall Suite) Described as an ‘ethical’ taxidermist, Jazmine Miles-Long produces work using only animals that have died from natural causes. This is an exciting opportunity to discover and understand the techniques used to create her work.

The audience will be able to handle objects and tools that show the process of taxidermy in different stages, while Jazmine also reveals some of the romantic stories in taxidermy historically. [please note: no dead animals will be used during the talk.]

Yep not your usual Valentine’s pursuit, but that’s no bad thing.

Memento Mori Still Life: Death Drawing workshop with Art Macabre (7 – 10pm, Undercroft) Join London’s purveyors of death-positive creativity, Art Macabre, to create your own unique memento mori collage. Be inspired by a contemporary twist on a traditional still life set up in the space, with objects from fruit and bones to symbols of modern life. Cut and paste a DIY design that will remind you of your own mortality. A reflective, creative activity to help you explore and draw inspiration upon looking death in the face.

Don’t go into the Cellar present ‘Tea with Oscar Wilde’ (split into three acts, taking place at intervals throughout the evening, Amphitheatre) A chat show with a difference brought to you by Don’t Go Into The Cellar! Theatre Company – the British Empire’s finest practitioners of top-notch Victorian entertainment. Join Oscar Wilde as he interviews a leading celebrity of the Victorian era, recounts a story or two and invites his audience to get ‘Caught in the Act’! Jonathan Goodwin plays the famed Victorian wit, in a show packed with comedy, music and audience participation.

These are only a few of what’s on offer. To find out more:

Website http://www.cityoflondon.gov.uk/guildhallartgallery

Location Guildhall Art Gallery and London’s Roman Amphitheatre, Guildhall Yard, London EC2V 5AR, 020 7332 3700

Admission Tickets are available priced £15 (plus booking fee) from https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/nature-morte-late-tickets40714482112?aff=efbeventtix

Getting there The closest tube stations are Bank (on the Central, Northern, District and Circle and DLR lines), St Paul’s (on the Central line), Mansion House (on the Circle and District lines) and Moorgate (on the Northern, Hammersmith and City, Circle and Metropolitan lines). The nearest rail station is Liverpool Street.

Twitter @GuildhallArt

Website http://www.cityoflondon.gov.uk/guildhallartgallery

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‘He was a maverick, a clown, a genius’

This play is about Ken – Ken Campbell – the force of nature who passed away some ten years ago.

Written by the incredibly successful, versatile and witty Terry Johnson – it’s more of a lecture and eulogy to Ken, whom Terry first met in 1978. It’s how Ken took a rag-tag collection of talented people to perform a 24-hour-long play in Edinburgh and other extraordinary adventures. It’s about Ken’s magnificently bizarre and inspiring character. It’s about hope.

Ken – Jeremy Stockwell (image courtesy of Robert Day)

Ken is played by the tour de force that is Jeremy Stockwell with an impression that is quite unnervingly accurate. How do I know? Did I meet Ken Campbell? No. But I studied him because I had the pleasure of performing in his play Old King Cole in Glenrothes many years ago. I played Baron Wadd – the weediest man in the entire world – and that character description alone gives you some idea of his approach to all things. Subtlety very rarely gets a look-in.

Terry’s view is eye-opening. It’s honest, loving and funny. As he informed us: some of the story is true – mainly the more incredible parts.

Terry Johnson

(image courtesy of Robert Day)

The audience enter to find the auditorium decked out with chairs and sofas and cushions. We’re encouraged to recline and have our own flashback to the hazy 70s. This stunning, carpeted design is by Tim Shortall.

The buzz before the play even starts is positive and upbeat, even though many there weren’t even born in the 1970s. The play itself continues that atmosphere and, although it lasts ninety minutes without an interval, it certainly doesn’t feel it. Director Lisa Spirling keeps the action flowing at a cracking pace and it only occasionally droops. There are references to things which the younger audience may need to ask about, but overall this is superb escapism from the dull real world, back into the fantastic brain and theatrical approach of Ken. He was a maverick, a clown, a genius. Terry Johnson is, in the simplest of ways, proving it.

(image courtesy of Robert Day)

Could the play be more touching and sentimental? Probably. Would Ken himself approve if it did? Maybe not. But I felt I wanted to touch a little more on the shadows of his darker side, not just the light. As he is quoted as saying: ‘funeral’ is an anagram of ‘real fun’.

Ken is the first in a series of four plays in The Bunker’s Spring Season. This one was first performed at the Hampstead Theatre and they are co-producers. The next three are: Electra by Sophocles, a new version produced by Dumbwise; Devil With The Blue Dress by Kevin Armento, produced by The Bunker; Grotty by Izzy Tennyson, produced by Damsel Productions. Check their website for further details. If Ken is anything to go by, the next three should all be brilliant.

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Photography:           Robert Day

Performances:         until 24th February 2018

Tuesday to Saturday at 7.30pm – Saturday & Sunday at 3pm

Venue:                     The Bunker, 53a Southwark Street, London SE1 1RU

Nearest station:       London Bridge

Tickets:                    www.bunkertheatre.com and 020 7234 0486

£19.50 (concessions £15) and U30s £10

Age:                         18+

Twitter:                     @BunkerTheatreUK, #Ken

Facebook:                /bunkertheatreuk

Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day and Easter are all looming, all heralding spring. But how to ring the changes in the gift line?

Aah, well, just sometimes we are able to sample something extraordinary, mark you, we knew it would be because our contributing editor, Margaret Graham, has a special fondness for Yorkshire, in particular North Yorkshire, and when there she homes in every time on Bettys Tearooms and shops, of which there are six. They are her absolute haven of deliciousness, and she raves about them. Well, you can see that she does.

They are proper tearooms: lovely tea, lovely buns, lovely staff. Big fat rascal scones are her downfall, so sampling some of Bettys new season gifts was NOT a chore. Have a look at the three we all pitched into.

The sponge cake 13CM DIAMETER | 500G | £12.95 Hand-decorated with a pretty spring flowers design in Royal icing, this light almond sponge cake is sandwiched with raspberry preserve and buttercream. And surely that was white chocolate on the bottom? Or so Margaret and her daughter thought. The mix of flavours, even in the icing, was fascinating, and worked extraordinarily well.

Bang went the diet.

That is presented as an Easter or Mother’s Day cake. But we fear it’s addictive, and can be on any table, at any time for any occasion, so enjoy.

We tried the NEW  Saddleback Chocolate Pig 12 X 7 X 7.5CM | 130G | £9.95 which was such a lovely image, and we had to pace ourselves as the tasting was leading to a disgusting exhibition of greed.

And the hand made small chocolate eggs made in Bettys craft bakery…

And myriad other gift boxes of chocs.

But let’s have a look at  Valentine’s day.

It would take the hardest heart to remain unmoved if any of these were the gift of the day:

With Love Chocolate Selection BOX OF 15 | 16 X 9.5CM | 140G | £19.95 An exquisite collection of Swiss Grand Cru milk and dark chocolates, with ganache, fondant cream and caramel centres.

Or try the Valentine’s Gift Box BOX: 25 X 19.5 X 9CM | £30.00 Contents:

• Chocolate Heart Assortment • Grand Cru Ganache Chocolate Cake • With Love Butter Biscuits and Strawberry • Strawberry, Cherry & Rose Tisane 2. Vanilla Caramel Hearts BOX OF 15 | 16 X 9.5CM | 150G | £17.95 Grand Cru Swiss dark chocolate filled with creamy vanilla caramel and finished with a dusting of gold lustre.

3. Champagne Truffles BOX OF 15 | 16 X 9.5CM | 165G | £17.95 Grand Cru Swiss milk chocolate filled with Moët & Chandon Champagne and Marc de Champagne ganache and finished with a melt-inthe-mouth raspberry powder.
4. Chocolate Heart Assortment BOX OF 7 | 22.5 X 3.5 X 2.5CM | 70G | £8.75 Includes: Blackcurrant Ganache, Champagne Truffle, Cru Sauvage Truffle, Raspberry Ganache, Rose Fondant, Violet Fondant and Vanilla Caramel.

Easter

These are the MOST BEAUTIFUL EGGS YOU CAN GIVE THIS EASTER. Forget Faberge, these are works of art. We weren’t sure we would be able to tuck into them. Oh come on, of course we could.

Bettys founder Frederick Belmont was a chocolatier and a Swiss master chocolatier. Nearly 100 years on, the Chocolate Room at Bettys remains a haven of true craftsmanship where our hand decorated Easter eggs are still made to Frederick’s exacting standard employing great attention to detail and using the very highest quality Swiss chocolate.

Take as an example the Spring Bloom Egg 19CM HIGH | 315G | £30.00 This is a strikingly colourful egg. Made with eau de nil coloured white chocolate, and finished with a silver lustre, it is decorated with bluebells, primroses, bumble bees and a sugar paste butterfly.

These we have mentioned are just a little bit of a taster, there are many others to choose from. Where?

Online www.bettys.co.uk Telephone 0800 456 1919 or 01423 814008

Shops Visit one of the six shops in Harrogate, Ilkley, Northallerton and York. Have tea while you’re there.

Corporate Gifts Service Please contact: pr@bettysandtaylors.co.uk or telephone 01423 814186.

There are many more fabulous gifts to be found on their website. We don’t always endorse so enthusiastically, but this time yes. We do just wish that we were sitting in one of Bettys Tea Rooms rather than in the office.

Try the mail order gifts, AND try Bettys Tea Rooms and shop whenever you see one.

Deliveries & Charges Bettys delivers to homes and businesses across the UK, as well as to Europe, North America, Australasia and the Far East.

Delivery charges start from £3.95 for the UK and from £12.95 internationally. Last order dates for Easter UK, Highlands & Islands – Friday 23 March UK, Mainland – Tuesday 27 March EU & Rest of world – Tuesday 20 March

My wife and I attended a Gala Dinner entitled Looking for the Perfect Food at the Osteria dell’Angolo Restaurant. Since childhood, I have had a personal mission to seek out the perfect jam roly poly. I had it once and it was superb, but ever since nothing has matched up to it. I know it’ll be my tastes that have changed just as much as the roly polys.

Often these days we are rushing about and eat only as a way of refuelling, so it was interesting to spend an evening with people who see food as an important part of family and culture.

Having a three-course dinner, created by the Head Chef Demian Mazzocchi at this friendly Italian restaurant in the shadow of Westminster Palace, is a great way to seek perfection. The exclusive evening was to celebrate one of the oldest and healthiest of foods in the world: extra virgin olive oil.

The mission: to create a menu showcasing a different extra virgin olive oil for each course. The oils, naturally, all emanating from Italy. Even though European production occurs in Spain, France, Portugal, Greece, Croatia, Serbia, Albania, San Marino, Cyprus, Slovenia and Malta as well.

My mission: to sit down, drink wine, chat to complete strangers and enjoy myself. Think I could manage that….

Starter

Risotto con broccolo “Romanesco” e baccala mantecato all’olio ‘Olitalia’

That’s a sublime risotto with Romanesco broccoli infused within it, cooked in a Venetian style. This broccoli is the green spirally cauliflower that uses the Fibonacci number system when it grows (Google it!). The olive oil used was Olitalia.

There was a generous serving, but sat here in the heart of an Italian evening, chatting food and lifestyle with our new Italian friends, I watched them enjoying the differing textures of the dish. Even though, as one of them whispered to me, olive oil is not traditional in risotto, they cleared their plates in no time, adoring it. I did likewise. Olitalia is, however, the world’s most widely distributed olive oil brand and no meal should be without it – even if it’s just used for dipping chunks of bread into!

Main

Costata di Manzo con timballino di patate, datterino confit, salsa rucola, aceto balsamico olio ‘Terre Alte’

This gorgeous rib-eye steak rested on extra virgin olive oil fried potato and confit cherry tomatoes. The rocket sauce and aged balsamic vinegar added punch, whereas the Terre Alte extra virgin olive oil provided a fruity sweetness followed by a pepper hit.

The melting meat vanished far too quickly even though the portion was not small in any degree.

Terre Alte extra virgin olive oil  is from an area of southern Tuscany known as ‘Meremma’ – a location that, along with its traditional harvesting methods, makes the oil’s fruity taste (albeit with a hint of artichoke) and its green to golden yellow colour.

This could not get any better. Could it? Oh, yes…

Dessert:

Crostino dolce con gelato all’olio ‘Redoro’ e rosmarino glassato

Sweet Crostino bread with Redoro extra virgin olive oil ice cream, garnished with a little rosemary.

That’s basically, ice cream on toast! A slight hesitation from me. Peter Kay’s cheesecake and garlic bread sketch coming to mind: ‘Ice cream. On toast? Ice cream. On toast?!’ But it’s more than that. The Crostino bread was drizzled with more of the Redoro – produced in the hilly areas of the province of Verona and having a golden green colour (if that’s possible!) with a fragrant, fruity bouquet – and I ate it like it was a canapé: holding it and biting into it. It was a bizarre sensation of textures: crusty bread and soft ice cream; warm and cold; savoury and sweet. We all agreed this was something special, something extraordinary. My wife is not a fan of desserts but she said it was one of the best things she has ever eaten. She has repeated this non-stop since. And I can’t help but agreeing with her.

Mind you – she never tasted the original jam roly poly that I did, all those years ago. Ah, memories…

Redoro

Olive Oil is good for you. Fact. Italians have known this for centuries and these three examples of cuisine show how olive oil – quality Italian Extra Virgin Olive Oil – can not only be an ingredient but the star of a dish, creating something unexpected and delicious.

Terre Alte

By the end, everyone was smiling. I certainly think we found the perfect food…

Osteria dell’Angolo restaurant 47 Marsham St, Westminster, London SW1P 3DR

Reservations: bookatable.co.uk, quandoo.co.uk, opentable.co.uk

Aprhodite’s Tears by Hannah Fielding

Already an award winning author, (Echoes of Love) Fielding looks set to tempt us to join her on the Greek island of Helios which is where Oriel Anderson goes to join an archaeological dive team. It’s not just any team but an all male one, bar her. She is there as their leader.

Dumped by her fiancé she is determined to ‘make it’.

But does she?

There are the usual areas of conflict, the dark brooding presence of her employer, to whom Oriel is attracted, but should she be? Will it all end in disaster? Possibly it seems when strange things start going bump in the night. Well, not bump in the night, but strange things occur which jeopardise not just her, but others who come to work on the dive.

The pages turn, the sun shines, the brooding darkness hovers. What’s not to like. Give it a try as Fielding reworks the Greek myth, Aphrodite’s Tears.

Aphrodite’s Tears by Hannah Fielding. HB £15.00 pub London Wall Publishers.

From sunshine to – snow.

After the Snow by Susannah Constantine, journalist, TV presenter and now debut novelist.

We’ve done the elite in Downton Abbey and now for a trawl of the untold story of the scandalous elite in the sixties.

Is it like a modern day Nancy Mitford as Sir Elton John proclaims?

Sort of, is the answer.

After the Snow follows eleven year old Esme Munroe… who wants as a Christmas present her mother to be on one of her ‘good days’ plus she longs for a velvet riding hat

The assortment of wet towels and dirty plates she finds in her stocking fall somewhat short, but at least Father Christmas has remembered her, after a fashion.

Later in the day her mother disappears in the heavy snow. Only the Earl of Culcairn seems to know where she might have gone. As Esme sets about both protecting her mother and uncovering the secrets of Culcairn Castle the one certainty is that life will never again be quite the same.

Mitford’s writing was tight and pithy, and this is not quite up to that almost impossibly high standard, but with Princess Margaret swishing through the novel there is an elite charm which will satisfy many readers. Give this a go too and it will brighten up the dank weather.

After the Snow by Susannah Constantine. pub HQ. HB £12.99

February is one of those months: dry- January is over, February is promising longer days, but it’s still winter. So time for a night out.

The Moor is coming up at the  Old Red Lion Theatre. So first a drink at the bar, then the play.

418 St John Street, London EC1V 4NJ

Jill McAusland (Call the Midwife, BBC1…), Oliver Britten (Walrus…) and Jonny Magnanti (Three Winters…)will form the cast for the world premiere of Catherine Lucie’s The Moor, a tense psychological thriller set in a place where nothing is as it seems.

Bronagh has lived at the heart of the moor for as long as she can remember, but recently she has started having the same troubling dream. Are the voices trying to tell her something? When a boy vanishes, Bronagh has to tell someone what she suspects, entangling herself and her boyfriend in a murder investigation.

The Moor pits Bronagh against her own past and present, dragging her, her baby daughter and those closest to them into something deeper than the marsh on the moor.

In a play that presents a meaty female character who is emotionally and intelligently charged, playwright Catherine Lucie explores what people are capable of when isolated and under pressure.

Director Blythe Stewart comments, I am delighted to be bringing Catherine Lucie’s thrilling and unnerving play to life – it’s an ambitious and bold work. At the heart of this play is a woman trying to make a difference in her life. I’m thrilled people will have the chance to see more than just a ‘strong female character’. Bronagh is nuanced: acute, reserved, ordinary, distinct, and changeable, and her fight is for herself. We are passionate about making work that gives a space for people usually on the edge of society and of our stories.

The Moor: Performance Dates  Tuesday 6th February – Saturday 3rd March 2018 Tuesday – Saturday, 7:30pm Saturday – Sunday, 3pm

Twitter @ORLTheatre, @riveproductions, #TheMoor

Box Office Old Red Lion Theatre Box Office and www.oldredliontheatre.co.uk or 0844 412 4307.

Tickets £18 (£14 concessions). Preview tickets are available at £12.