Northampton Symphony Orchestra concert

17 December 2025

The Northampton Symphony Orchestra’s ‘Christmas Cracker’ concert - a Sunday-afternoon, family-friendly performance - always features a narrated piece. This year we told two stories to our packed audience at the Spinney Theatre in Northampton. In the first half of the concert our compere William Thallon narrated 'Paddington Bear's First Concert' – in which Herbert Chappell creates an extensive theme and variations from his signature tune for the old BBC TV 'Paddington'. And after the interval William told the story of Charles Dickens’ ‘A Christmas Carol’ in a version by Lawrence Killian, with words by Margaret Killian. This year’s concert was a particularly Christmassy Christmas Cracker - with no film music and almost every piece featuring familiar Christmas carol tunes. It was billed as a British Christmas, focussing on works by UK composers, including ‘A Christmas Overture’ by Nigel Hess and Malcolm Arnold’s arrangement of ‘The Holly and the Ivy’ - but still finding room for our signature ‘Sleigh Ride’ by Leroy Anderson. It was a very slick, enjoyable concert, brilliantly held together by conductor John Gibbons and featuring excellent solos across many sections of the orchestra but I will particularly remember Helen Taylor’s beautiful flutter-tongue piccolo solo evoking Paddington’s Darkest Peru. 

‘Blue Lights’ by Declan Lawn and Adam Patterson

12 December 2025

I’m a big fan of ‘Blue Lights’ - the brilliant BBC TV police drama by Declan Lawn and Adam Patterson which is set in present-day Belfast. The first series of this show which follows a response team of rookie police officers in a Belfast station focussed on events in a republican community in West Belfast. Series two was set in a loyalist community in East Belfast and series three, which I have just finished watching, turns to leafy South Belfast. I’m guessing I know where series four will be set: I just hope that’s not the end of the story. ‘Blue Lights’ is a police procedural that makes you genuinely care for the individual police officers, and sympathise with the impossibility of their jobs. It’s also incredibly tense. I was watching an episode of the latest series on a flight to Dublin a few weeks ago and realised part-way through that I was holding my fingers in front of my face and peeking through the gaps. Some scenes are impossible to watch but completely unmissable. The show paints a realistic picture of contemporary Northern Ireland - and has a great soundtrack featuring some wonderful new local music. I realised quite early in series one that ‘Blue Lights’ is essentially a modern Belfast version of the classic 1980s American cop series ‘Hill Street Blues’ - and that only made me like it more. All three series of 'Blue Lights' are available on BBC iPlayer.

The Stanley Spencer Gallery, Cookham

5 December 2025

Last weekend we were in the pretty town of Cookham on the Thames in Berkshire to visit the Stanley Spencer Gallery. It’s a lovely little museum celebrating Cookham’s most famous resident. The gallery is currently focussing on Spencer’s final unfinished painting ‘Christ Preaching at Cookham Regatta’ - a painting frozen mid-creation. This huge canvas has been lowered from its usual position high on the wall to floor level to allow visitors to examine it closely. It is fascinating to see, in the unpainted sections, Spencer’s grid lines and sketches. Throughout autumn 2025 a conservator from the Courtauld Institute is working in the gallery, carefully examining the painting, and explaining her work (and Spencer’s technique) to visitors. Stanley Spencer died in 1959 but there are still some Cookham residents who remember him pushing his pram (filled with paints and brushes) around the town to find subjects for his works. The pram is now displayed in the gallery, as are sketches for Spencer’s incredible war frescoes in Sandham Memorial Chapel which we visited at Burghclere, Hampshire, in November 2023.