Theatre/
poetry

Burgh House

Keats House

Embassy Theatre

An entertainment of poetry and prose on the theme of Dance and Dancing, presented by Diana Bishop, Piers Plowright and Valerie Sarruf.

Poet Jehane Markham performs her narrative poem with musical interludes played by Robin Phillips, piano, and Jonny Gee, double bass.

Danny Driver, piano; Gabriel Woolf, reader

A portrait of Chopin in his 200th birthday year, including some of his best-loved piano music and Chopin’s own letters to friends and relatives.

Simon Callow is Sergey Diaghilev in Matthew Hurt’s dramatic profile of the man who lived by one rule: ‘Don’t repeat; never look back’. Followed by Q & A. Presented and produced by broadcaster Piers Plowright.

Ends approx. 8.45 pm.

Director of theatre, opera and TV, Jonathan Miller examines the radical nature of Anton Chekhov’s dramatic writing and its effect on actors and acting. With readings by special guests. Presented and produced by broadcaster Piers Plowright.

Ends approx. 9.15 pm.

Zinovy Zinik, novelist, essayist and critic, gets behind the masks of Leo Tolstoy to look at his politics, religion and sexual obsessions. Illustrated by readings, and music performed by Mary Hofman, violin and Anya Fadina, piano. Presented and produced by broadcaster Piers Plowright.

Ends approx. 9.15 pm.

Cathy Porter, writer and translator, talks to writer and psychotherapist, Liane Aukin about her newly published edition of Tolstoy’s wife’s revealing and touching diaries.

A reading of Anna Akhmatova’s epic cycle of poems produced by Liane Aukin and read by Glenda Jackson, CBE MP.