The John Thornton Young Achievers Foundation (JTYAF) Hospitality Day at the Bournemouth Air Festival will be held on Sunday 2^nd September. The charity is offering a fantastic VIP experience at the heart of Bournemouth’s premier event. Why not treat yourself, or buy tickets as a gift for someone special? There are just a few left.

The Air Festival Hospitality marquee is the only hospitality venue located on the beach directly under the central flight line, providing the perfect setting to watch the action.

The VIP package includes:

• Exclusive marquee and viewing area
• Glass of bubbly on arrival
• Two course lunch
• Afternoon cream tea
• Access to VIP bar and viewing deck throughout the day
• Private toilets
• There may also be the opportunity to meet passing display teams who pop into the marquee for refreshments!

All proceeds from the day will be donated to the JTYAF.

The John Thornton Young Achievers Foundation (JTYAF) was established in 2008 to honour the memory of John Thornton, a young Royal Marines Officer from Ferndown who was tragically killed, at the age of 22, whilst serving in Afghanistan.

 John had achieved so much in his short life, so the provision of opportunities for local young people to achieve both their ambitions and potential in life was a fitting legacy of which John would be immensely proud.

The JTYAF supports young people from a number of youth organisations providing them with scholarships and bursaries which give them access to opportunities that they wouldn’t otherwise have had.

Recipients of the awards are selected for their commitment to their chosen activity and also their demonstration of the Foundation’s key values: courage, determination, unselfishness and cheerfulness in adversity.

The JTYAF has now made awards of £600,000 to more than 1600 young people. The Trustees are all volunteers.  The JTYAF has no paid staff and no premises and by keeping running costs to a minimum ensures that the maximum amount of funds raised are directly invested in young people.

Thanks to the overwhelming support of the board of trustees and ambassadors, the patron Simon Weston OBE, and the incredible backing of the local community the JTYAF has succeeded in the provision of opportunities for many local young people to fulfil their dreams in life and to really develop as individuals.

The JTYAF has supported young people on expeditions to Tanzania, India, Ecuador, Peru, Grenada, Cape Town, China and the Pyrenees, supported Olympic hopefuls in ice skating, swimming, power lifting, cycling, horse riding, badminton, and given awards for trombones, telescopes, cameras, educational support for dyslexia, music tuition, sailing expeditions, the list is endless and demonstrates the diversity which the JTYAF encourages.  In an age where young people can be commonly misconceived as causing only trouble for society, the JTYAF thrives on proving that there are some amazing youngsters out there who, given the opportunity, can make a genuine difference to not only their own lives, but also to those of other individuals and to the wider community.

John touched the lives of many people and now his legacy lives on making a real difference to the lives of local young people.

More information and  to buy tickets  www.jtyaf.org

Image courtesy of Michael Rowan

The one good thing to come out of the searing summer temperatures is the opportunity it has created to sit in the garden, on a beach or at a picnic and drink chilled white wines. Given the number of hot days, there is room to try out some different wines, which is how I came to discover Zalse, Bush Valley Chenin Blanc.

It seems that the UK is not alone in experiencing unseasonably hot weather this year, and the South African wine producers reported a dry winter, combined with an early spring; leading to an early bud break with warmer than normal temperatures throughout January. This meant one of the earliest harvests in memory.

Whilst admiring all the hard work and planning that goes into producing Zalse, Bush Valley Chenin Blanc, it is the nose and taste that should concern us most.

That first deep inhalation reveals aromas of lime and citrus zest, mixed with some tropical fruits which are also discernible on the palette. The elegant minerality ensures that there is a very long finish.

Zalse would be a great companion to a variety of food but to be honest, it is just as good drunk on its own and at only £10.00 a bottle from Waitrose, Morrisons and Asda, you could try it both ways, strictly in the name of science you understand.

The producers advise that the wine will mature gracefully over the next 3 to 5 years, but with wine

as tasty as this I am not sure that I will ever have the self-discipline to find out.

Zalse Bush Valley Chenin Blanc: £10.00 Waitrose, Morrisons and Asda

www.kleinezalse.co.za

In The Blood by Ruth Mancini

I have to be careful when I read a book as compelling as In The Blood by Ruth Mancini – I need to put it down well before bedtime, or I’ll have to leave the light on. This unsettling crime novel draws in class, motherhood and power as in southeast London, a young mother has been accused of poisoning her young son, and leaving him to die. Just because Ellie is challenging, or actually unlikeable, does that mean she’s capable of murder? Lawyer Sarah Kellerman tries to prize  the truth from wherever she can. But then her own disabled son becomes ill…  Arghhhh.

In the Blood by Ruth Mancini £18.99 hardback. Head of Zeus   (Review: Milly Adams)

The Boy at the Door by Alex Dahl

How far would any of us go for the perfect life – if we hadn’t already won the lottery of course?

What if you had that perfect life: a yummy husband, two smashing children, and a large comfortable house in a cute town? Then a cuckoo crashes the cosy nest: Tobias has landed bringing with him the ability to shatter the edifice.

Should someone have to pay for an earlier mistake? How many of us have never made one?

A twisting and winding tale of secrets emerging. Complex but empathetic. I enjoyed it.

The Boy at the Door hb £14.99 Head of Zeus (Review Annie Clarke)

I did it For Us by Alison Bruce

Sophie Hannah found this challenging and compelling. And it is.

It’s intricate and the question it poses is just why does Emily do what she does? Is it really to prove to Joanne that the young widow’s new love is not what he seemed, or does she have her own agenda?

After all, Emily Stirling’s life had fallen apart after a devastating court case and she left that life in search of another. But how far does that search take her? Yes, she finds a refuge in a rental flat, and in a friendship with Joanne and her two young children but… but…

Pacey, twisting and turning, this psychological thriller works well. Phew.

I did it for Us by Alison Bruce pub: Constable. pb/ebook £8.99   (Review Milly Adams)

Milly Adams is an author with Arrow.

Anne Clarke  makes her debut with Arrow in 2019

image courtesy of Chris Reynolds

After taking the Edinburgh Fringe by storm in 2017, winning the prestigious Herald Angel Award, Ellie Dubois’ No Show offers a glimpse into what lies hidden beneath the showmanship of circus and deconstructs these incredible superhuman circus performers.

This is a show for anyone who has tried, failed and failed better.

The production joyously and heartbreakingly reveals what lies hidden beneath the showmanship of circus. What do you expect when you go to the circus?  The greatest show on earth?

No Show opens with five strong, glamorous circus artists showcasing their spellbinding acrobatics and flexibility – the perfect ‘show girls’.  But, after this opening number, the show starts to break down and No Show begins to unveil attempts and failures, revealing frustrations and how artists are pitted against each other.  The audience learn of everything that could go wrong from finger crushing to concussion and shoulder dislocation in a Cyr Wheel act.  And as someone who has dislocated, and broken her shoulder at the same time a year ago, let me tell you, it ain’t a bundle of laughs. But the show must go on…

In this production, we are allowed the opportunity to see behind the flawless smiles and perfect execution of traditional circus performance – to see the wobbles, the pain and the real cost of aiming for perfection.

Ellie Dubois comments, Touring is the lifeblood of theatre and part of the circus tradition, so it is super exciting to be taking No Show across the UK and bringing contemporary circus to many different communities in diverse venues from theatres to village halls.  At a time when sexual politics are being exposed in film, theatre and other art forms, it seems especially important that circus is also exploring its gender politics.

 No Show was also shortlisted for a Total Theatre & Jacksons Lane Award for Circus.

This tour is funded by ACE Creative Scotland.

Running time  60 minutes   Box Office Tickets are available from the individual theatre box offices

Twitter   @ellie_dubois, #noshow

Trailer   https://vimeo.com/175412172

Performance Dates

12th – 13th Sept  Tayvallich Village Hall    Village Hall, Tayvallich, PA31 8PR

16th – 17th Sept  Lyth Arts Centre Lyth, Wick KW1 4UD

20th September  Eden Court Bishops Road, Inverness IV3 5SA

21st September  Comar, Mull    An Tobar, Argyll Terrace, Tobermory, PA75 6PB

23rd September  MAC Galashiels  Bridge Street, Galashiels TD1 1SP

26th September  The Brewery Arts Centre, Kendal 122a Highgate, Kendal, Cumbria, LA9 4HE

27th September Platform, Glasgow 1000 Westerhouse Road, Glasgow, G34 9JW

28th September Women of the World Festival, Perth Theatre    Mill Street, Perth, PH1 5HZ

29th September Woodend Barn, Banchory The Barn, Burn O Bennie, Banchory, AB31 5QA

4th October  Macrobert Arts Centre, Stirling University of Stirling, Stirling, FK9 4LA

5th October  The Lowry, Manchester Pier 8, Salford Quays, M50 3AZ

6th – 7th October Theatre Deli, Sheffield 202 Eyre Street, Sheffield, S1 4QZ

8th October  Carriageworks Theatre, Leeds 3 Millennium Square, Leeds LS2 3AD

11th – 12th October  MAC Belfast 10 Exchange Street West, Belfast, BT1 2NJ

13th – 14th October  Summerhall, Edinburgh Summerhall Place, Edinburgh, EH9 1PL

15th October  Nuffield Theatre, Lancaster Lancaster Arts at Lancaster University, LA1 4YW

16th – 17th October The Hullabaloo, Darlington Borough Road, Darlington, Durham, DL1 1SG

19th October  Quarterhouse, Folkestone Quarterhouse, Mill Bay, Folkestone, Kent CT20 1BN

20th October  Proteus Theatre, Basingstoke    Council Road, Basingstoke, Hampshire, RG21 3DH

24th – 27th October Tobacco Factory, Bristol Raleigh Road, Bristol, BS3 1TF

28th October  Cambridge Junction Clifton Way, Cambridge, CB1 7GX

Milly Adams is the author of Love on the Waterways published by Arrow. Hope on the Waterways comes out on 20th September.

Jennifer Wilkin Shaw was awarded joint second place in the WforW Gerogina Hawtrey-Woore Award for Independent Authors, Non-Fiction Category with the beautifully written a Testament of Grief.

My morning begins at 7.30 when I switch on Classic FM, stroke two cats, breakfast from a tray, including a pot of Earl Grey, and start reading. The latter, a pre-requisite to writing, is company and gets my brain into gear.  My choice is literary biography or rather, ‘other sillies like me’ and often the spouses of those historical literary figures, many of whom were writers themselves: Constance Wilde, Sylvia Plath, Assia Wevill.

I wake up as a writer and now having won a prestigious award I feel recognised and proud. After breakfast I answer emails, usually about my work, plan appointments, future talks, and have a quick audio chat.  I begin writing just after 9. At the moment I am working on a new book and fine tuning my third play, getting it ready for a staged read.

Lunch is another chance for reading, part of the writer’s toolbox, and a change of setting, conservatory if warm, my big red sofa if not, and although I’d love to be with the Durrells, chatting and indulging around their huge communal table, at the moment I’m with George Orwell in Paris and London, again! At this point Crumble or Custard may saunter in and lure me into some time wasting, but I resist.

People who create have to be single minded and often alone. I depend on solitude to work, but I do have to balance it with social interaction, otherwise, as a writer living in the sticks, I run the risk of feeling cut off. I remember the first time I wrote; a piece about a lonely rabbit. I was seven and confined myself to my bedroom until I finished. Nothing much has changed! So in the afternoon I routinely go out! A coffee shop, independents mainly, different beans, different days, they expect me!

At Filter Through Coffee Shop, Holsworthy

Generally, people take you seriously as a writer if you sit in a corner, fresh from the shower, with a state of the art Apple Mac and headphones. In a western world that struggles with too much, I value the ‘less is more’ approach. Sitting amongst people, with a small piece of paper, a tiny sharp pencil, correcting the work saved on my phone.  My world seems miniature, even my coffee is in a dolls size tea cup a ‘double macchiato’, titchy! But I have produced some of my best monologues this way.

I walk for half an hour to an hour every other day, and after some food shopping I mosey home, meet a good friend for a meal, or sometimes go to the theatre. As a playwright, again this is important, but my default direction is the sofa, a decent glass of red, NCI S, then more corrections. A thoughtful couple of Beeb 2 or 4 programmes, loving Simon Schama’s presentations at the moment, it taps into my other love, Art History, and I am ready for bed; thankful for so many great friends, relatives coming into my life, and the freedom to write.

a Testament of Grief by Jennifer Wilkin Shaw pub Simone Bluestock Publishing

Available as e-book or paperback from: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Testament-Grief-Mothers-Story-Survival/dp/0995594902

www.facebook.com/jennifer.wilkinshaw

www.wordsforthewounded.co.uk

I have to admit that I came to this book as someone with very limited knowledge (and even less understanding) of Hokusai’s work. I hope I am not the only one who thought: ‘Hokusai? The Great Wave?’ and then could add very little more. If you are like me then you need this book. I suspect you will get even more from it if you already know something about late 18^th and 19^th century Japanese art.

Hokusai: The Master’s Legacy presents a selection of more than 200 works. It is a sumptuous volume with exceptionally high quality illustrations coupled with a text that supplies both a historical and an artistic context in which to explore these images.

Setting Hokusai’s life (1760 to 1849) and work in Japanese society gave me the opportunity to begin to appreciate the significance of details (the bow on an obi, the use of colour, the oblique indicators of seasons) and enriched my reading of the art. By pointing out that the arrival of the US Fleet in 1854 opened up Japanese ports to trade with Europe and the USA I realised why the passion for all things Japanese swept Europe soon afterwards. The fabrics, prints, furniture and porcelain must have been an explosive revelation of a new (to us) approach to design, technology and art. Realism gives way to minute detail of stylised figures, perspective is almost abandoned. Impressionism and Post Impressionism show some of the impact.

And I had no idea at all of Hokusai’s range. Yes, The Great Wave keeps its impact, but the landscapes (not just Mount Fuji) and the figurative work are a revelation. And although he was a significant master in his own time, and hugely influential, he did not work alone. The inclusion of a broad selection of works by his contemporary, Keisai Eisen, provides an interesting comparison of styles. Eisien’s seductive female portraits are particularly striking.

Take this book away and linger over it as I have done/am still doing. It will enrich your artistic understanding.

Hokusai: The Master’s Legacy is published by Skira.  Priced $55, £40, €46

Penny Deacon is the author of A Thankless Child and A Kind of Puritan.

Pub: Creative Content Ltd. Available on Amazon.co.uk

Denise Beddows took joint second place in the WforW Georgina Hawtrey-Woore Award for Independent Authors: Non-Fiction Category with the brilliant and engrossing Odd Man Out. And here she tells us of a typical day in her life.

Many of us recall with warm nostalgia the bedtime stories our mothers used to read to us. My late mother, a former wartime bus conductress in Lancashire, was an avid reader of lurid press accounts of murder. She could recount every detail of every murder of the twentieth century, and recount them she did – every time I begged a bedtime story. Not for me the gentle tales of Noddy or Peter Rabbit. No, tragic Ruth Ellis, last woman hanged in Britain, and Haigh, the acid bath murderer, were my bedtime companions. So, it came as a surprise to me when, only recently, I learned that one of my mother’s fellow ‘clippies’ was executed for murder; a murder Mum never once mentioned.

My curiosity piqued, I set about researching the case. Contemporaneous press reports were brief, perhaps because, although the accused confessed to the crime, she never said why she did it. She did not give evidence in court and nor did she appeal her death sentence. So, had middle-aged Margaret Allen brutally beaten to death Nancy Chadwick, an elderly woman whom she barely knew, and if so, why?

The victim, an eccentric and parsimonious scrounger, was described by her own nephew as ‘abnormal’. The killer, too, was unconventional to say the least. Allen, the twentieth of twenty-two children, born in extreme poverty, believed she was really a man and insisted on being addressed as ‘Bill’. The only explanation Allen offered for the killing was ‘I must have been in one of my funny moods’. The police presented the case as a murder in furtherance of a robbery, albeit that Allen was penniless when arrested. Clearly, the case warranted further investigation.

Close scrutiny of the records showed that much crucial evidence was suppressed by police at the time. Numerous witnesses claimed they had seen the victim hours after the alleged time of death. Statements by Allen’s family, putting her three miles away at the time of the murder, were neither tested nor put before the court. Scurrilous allegations made in court about Allen’s character and behaviour were demonstrably untrue, and public opinion was prejudiced by allegations of a lesbian relationship between Allen and her close friend Annie Cook. Seemingly, like Ruth Ellis, Allen was hanged as much for what she was as for what she was alleged to have done.

Drawing on historic interviews, I also contacted people who had met Allen. Their recollections were of a kind and generous person, not at all the violent, brutish character portrayed in press reports. Although, after one of the shortest murder trials on record, the judge deemed this a ‘motiveless, senseless’ killing, I uncovered a very obvious potential motive.

There comes a point, however, when most researchers experience qualms about delving intrusively into a stranger’s background. Indeed, I questioned my own motives in exploring the intimate detail of Allen’s life. Was I seeking to establish Allen’s motive, to find reason to mitigate this awful crime, and, perhaps, even to prove her innocence, or was this simply morbid curiosity? After much soul-searching, I persuaded myself that, whilst curiosity was my motivation, my aim was to give a voice to a troubled and disadvantaged transgendered individual, a troubled soul who chose to say very little about herself or her crime but went quietly and with dignity to the scaffold. As Margaret’s executioner, Albert Pierrepoint, famously said: ‘murderers are so often ordinary people caught on the wrong foot’.

A volunteer researcher for several history and heritage groups, Denise regularly gives talks to a variety of community groups. She is married with one grown-up daughter.

Denise, who also writes under the name of D J Kelly, has also written the well received Buckinghamshire Spies & Subversives, The Famous and Infamous of The Chalfonts and Gerrards Cross, Chalfont St Peter and Gerrards Cross at War, A Wistful Eye – The Tragedy of a Titanic Shipwright, Running with Crows – The Life and Death of a Black and Tan, Homes for Heroes – Life in a 1940s Prefab (ghost written with Joan Brant).