Churches across Exmoor and Dartmoor will come alive with music next month in the 10-day Two Moors Festival, which was started in 2001 to cheer a farming area devastated by foot-and-mouth disease. The great contralto Kathleen Ferrier, whose centenary it is this year, is honoured in a concert at Ashburton on October 13; the bicentenaries of Charles Dickens and Robert Browning are celebrated with concerts at Widecombe-in-the-Moor (October 14) and Hatherleigh (October 15), and the victims of Titanic are remembered in a recital by the soprano Caroline MacPhie at Okehampton (October 16).
The Military Wives' Choir will perform at Tavistock (October 18), Richard Kay lectures on 500 years of royal portraiture at Witheridge (October 17), Benjamin Mee tells the story of Dartmoor Zoo at the Royal Oak, Withypool (October 20), and Phyllida Lloyd, director of the films Mamma Mia! and The Iron Lady, will give a talk in Dulverton (October 21).
Tickets from 01643 831006 or www.thetwomoorsfestival.co.uk
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