August bank holiday weekend is like Christmas day for horror fans thanks to Frightfest who deliver a sackful of disturbing delights in their 15th year. An inspiring line-up sees Downton Abbey's Dan Stevens reinvent himself as a charming psychopath in opening night film The Guest. Adam Wingard and Simon Barrett (You're Next) amaze once again with a blend of Eighties-style action and horror.Meanwhile, horror classics such as Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining and A Nightmare on Elm Street play alongside up-and-coming British fare such as Oliver Frampton’s bleak take on past trauma The Forgotten and Read more ...

Entering Wilderness is like stepping into the brain of Baz Luhrmann. It is a kaleidoscope of colours, swirling with noise and feathers, surreal in its array of vintage-bohemian-steampunk spectacle, and magical in its collaboration of the arts and nature.It is a great big fancy dress party – a chance for the middle-class masses to pour themselves into their finest, most psychedelic unitards and bejeweled headdresses, douse themselves in clouds of glitter, swathe themselves in sequins and get utterly decadent, letting their inner exhibitionist run wild for a weekend. They can watch music and Read more ...

“If this isn’t nice, what is?” Kurt Vonnegut’s vow to repeat his Uncle Alex’s mantra when things were going “sweetly and peacefully” has been much on my mind during various idylls this war-torn summer. It certainly applied to hearing three boys and a girl in their early teens play a cloudless early Haydn string quartet in the beautifully restored small neoclassical theatre of a perfect Umbrian hill town. But as so often with troubles elsewhere always at the back of our minds, nothing was quite that simple.The young people were totally focused on the work in a performance of astonishing Read more ...

Some years ago I read a piece about a novel of Thomas Bernhard, Wittgenstein’s Nephew. Bernhard (1931-1989) was perhaps the most famous Austrian writer of his time, but unknown to me. In this article he was described as intense, manically obsessive, addicted to the unvarnished truth, and innovative in his constructions. I read the novel and was hooked. Bernhard’s novels have no paragraphs, and read like the monologues of a man possessed. You almost need to read them in one sitting. I read all his novels available in translation, and rushed to the bookshop every time I heard of a new Read more ...

Remember when festivals were only about what they were ostensibly about? When, say, Reading offered nothing beyond hard rock bar disgusting toilets, overpriced hamburgers and the prospect of a punch-up. When literary festivals dealt only in, well, literature. Nowadays, the average music festival offers all the amenities of a small city, not just music, but shopping, comedy, ballet and every form of spiritual and bodily therapy. But even in these times of festival as free-form lifestyle experience Port Eliot is something else.Arriving at the festival site, in the grounds of a neo-gothic Read more ...

“Tonight, in the Faroe Islands, we’re going to find the greatest dancer.” It’s not an exhortation which often rings out. It could even be a first time The Faroes have been invited to demonstrate their disco prowess. Sister Sledge are on stage and about to launch into their 1979 Chic-produced world-wide smash “He’s the Greatest Dancer”.This, though, is 2014 and the Sledge sisters are playing G! Festival, the Faroes’ annual celebration of their own culture and popular music. The other Nordic countries are here too – bands from Denmark, Iceland, Norway and Sweden are playing.But G! is about the Read more ...

The only bad thing about Latitude is a serious case of FOMO (fear of missing out). Some proper planning is advised - or a quick purchase of the Latitude App, if you're lucky enough to get reception over the weekend - to weigh up clashes and work out routes through the forest and up and down the undulating landscape of Henham Park, Suffolk.And yet the civilised chaos of who and what to see, where, is what makes up the Latitude experience. From the bewitching opening ceremony on the Waterfront Stage on Thursday evening, with a spellbinding vocal performance from The Irrepressibles and a Read more ...

PrologueOn Thursday 26 June I arrive at a cloudy but warm Glastonbury Festival, set up camp, eat sausages, chase after DJ Richie Hawtin for an interview that never happens, then acclimatise, settle, let this hedonist Mecca do its work on me…Friday 27 JuneIt starts as spotting. Then it lets go. The sound of droplets pattering against the outer skin of the brown four-person tent becomes a regular tattoo. I lie within, waiting out the mind-fuzz of yesterday’s cider, whisky and chemicals, munching on a breakfast of Morrisons Cheese Savouries (which are, incidentally, addictive). I wonder if 2014 Read more ...

José Mourinho is Setúbal’s most famous son. Non-Portuguese readers are not expected to know the two other celebrities most feted by this extraordinary port city on the estuary of the River Sado, with miles of sandy beaches opposite where a school of dolphins resides and the lush national park of the Arrábida mountain range just to the west. Luísa Todi, the Portuguese mezzo who graced the court of Catherine the Great, gives her name to the lovely garden avenue which is the city’s most relaxed hub; poet Manuel Maria Barbosa du Bocage’s statue looks over the central square in his honour (“hardly Read more ...

You are or maybe wish you were at Glastonbury this weekend. Not me. I last went six years ago and it’s just too big for me. And you need about four different passes to get backstage should you have a good or a bad reason to get there. Too bureaucratic. However, I was, as ever, more than glad to be at the Fes Festival of World Sacred Music, which is more human in scale, sociable and, at times, transcendent. This year was the 20th edition. I have gone as many times as I possibly could.A couple of decades back, one autumnal morning in my flat in North London my fax machine juddered into Read more ...

While you give your tent an airing in anticipation of festival season, think about the imaginative adventures your teenyboppers might enjoy – from colourful creative activities to bushcraft workshops and babysitting services, there’s much on offer for burgeoning revelers as well as their party-hardy-folks to enjoy. 1. Cornbury, July 4-6, Great Tew Park, OxfordshireAffectionately nicknamed "Poshstock" for its middle-class blend of old school headliners, sub-swanky bars and a glamping section, Cornbury has a range of creative and exciting areas for kids aged six months to five years. Read more ...

Sprawling over the East End of London for the next thirteen days and boasting an illuminating line-up of new voices, retrospectives and debate in its 13th year, the East End Film Festival ensures no cinematic rock is left unturned with its bold programming choices.Monte Hellman’s controversial Cockfighter gets a rare outing at Red Gallery, a grand Masonic Temple is home to a weekend of macabre cinema and the opening night gala proves the festival’s dedication to championing filmmakers they believe in with the world premiere of Ross Clarke’s first feature, New Orleans-set drama, Dermaphoria. Read more ...