Rook Lane Blog

August 9, 2024

When did you last have a good conversation?
Are you ‘zoomed out’ by endless virtual meetings?
Brian Snellgrove, will lead a discussion with audience participation on The Art of Conversation

May 20, 2024

Lynn Barber is one of the best loved – and most notorious – journalists and interviewers in the country. She began her career at Penthouse, moving on to the Independent on Sunday, The Observer and The Telegraph. Join Lynn as she discusses the tales from her book A Little Art History.

March 8, 2023

An evening of talks, entertainment and dancing with food by Ebbie’s Kitchen, Bar and Raffle with a celebrity guest speaker to be announced. Tony is raising money for CRUK by hosting this ball as well as hiking across Snowdonia this year, followed by a 1000 mile treck in Iceland. He will tell of his inspirational fight with cancer since he was 19

June 13, 2022

A Frome Society for Local Study event to coincide with the ‘Celebrated Women of Frome’ exhibition at Frome Museum. Although famous in her day throughout most of the known world, Elizabeth Rowe has sadly been neglected for the greater part of the time since her death in 1737. A re-evaluation of her works and their influence, however, has been recently taking place. Dr Carole Sargent, from Georgetown University, Washington DC, will talk about why Elizabeth Rowe still matters today and how Frome can best honour her.

June 13, 2022

Photographer John Angerson was granted unprecedented access to the Kennedy Space Center, Florida
and the Johnson Space Center, Houston, Texas, USA, to document the final months of a yearlong intensive training programme preparing for the NASA (STS-72) mission in January 1996. After revisiting the original negatives during lockdown without the pressures of the original deadline, he discovered photographs that had been previously overlooked.

June 13, 2022

In ‘Does Photography Still Mean Anything?’, Joss and Martin will debate the meaning of photography, in an interactive discussion, moderated by Mick Yates. Audience participation is not only welcome but needed! The hope is that as a group, and maybe more importantly, as individuals, we ask ourselves whether, in a world so awash with images taken by so-called professionals and amateurs alike, covering every aspect of life, it’s all become rather meaningless.

June 17, 2021

John Hegley is one of the UKs foremost performance poets. A regular for BBC radio and a headliner in festivals around the country including Edinburgh, he has produced ten books of verse and prose, two CDs and one mug. His poems manage to take the minutiae of modern life like dogs, potatoes and handkerchiefs spinning them into a philosophical framework.

June 7, 2021

An illustrated talk by Christopher Joll, based on his recently published book. Christopher is director of many national military events and also a military historian.

June 7, 2021

Martin Bax will give the first Bob Morris Memorial Lecture. An illustrated talk about the early years of the Frome Festival, of which he is the Founder and President.

March 11, 2020

A stonemason’s story of the building of Britain: part archaeological history, part deeply personal insight into an ancient craft.