Tyneside honours its famous engraver, Thomas Bewick
The great artist gave London a go but found its people cheeky. So he went back home and made his name in Newcastle and Gateshead. Alan Sykes flags up a new exhibitionMay 2012 is the bicentenary of Thomas Bewick moving across the Tyne from Newcastle to...
Snogging couples and skirts that won’t fall down
A sparkling collection of stage managers' notes suggests that some of the best drama happens behind the scenes. And in the audience. Alan Sykes reportsTheatrical disasters are as old as theatre itself. No doubt somebody "corpsed" on the stage on the f...
Lake District festival offers bursaries to attract a younger audience
Applicants aged between 17 and 24 can get ten free tickets for Words by the Water at Keswick, one of the main attractions of the Lake District visitors' year.Audience sampling has shown that only about 5% of the people attending the Words by the Water ...
Tyneside honours the teenage cook who helped to break the Nazis’ Enigma code
Tommy Brown grabbed data from a sinking U-boat and won the George Medal - but was sent home when the episode revealed that he was only 15. Alan Sykes reportsNot many teenage catering assistants can have shortened the war and saved tens of thousands of...
Maestro of the all-nude Lysistrata plans an unforgettable evening at Newcastle’s Mordern Tower
The turret venue hoicked Basil Bunting from obscurity as a newspaper sub, and impressed Allen Ginsberg with the quality of Geordie graffiti. Guardian Northerner arts man Alan Sykes knows much...This Thursday, 17 November, there is a relatively rare cha...
