Join us for a peek inside The Quality Street factory with author Penny Thorpe whose novel The Quality Street Girls is just out in paperback. What is Christmas without Quality Street? And who better to let us into the secret of Quality Street than Penny Thorpe? Penny was the company archivist for Nestlé for over 10 years. She has amassed a wealth of stories about the manufacture of chocolate in York and the people involved in the industry. She is writing a series of novels, under the pen name Penny Thorpe, based on her knowledge and experience, the first of which is The Quality Street Girls.
YORK’S CLIFTON PARK WILL STAGE TWO FIRST CLASS MATCHES IN JUST 72 HOURS, AGAINST NORTHAMPTONSHIRE (ON TUESDAY AUG 4th) AND SURREY (THURSDAY AUG 6th)
After First-Class cricket returned to the City of York in 2019, the first time since a Championship match at Wigginton Road in 1890 when Yorkshire beat Kent, Clifton Park is also scheduled to host two List A matches within the space of 72 hours. Northamptonshire and Surrey are the visitors in a revamped competition that is no longer regionalised. This forms part of a three-year agreement which promised List A cricket to the City for 2020 and 2021.
“York did really well last year!” said the Club’s CEO Mark Arthur. “We enjoyed it and the spectators enjoyed it too. We had a lovely letter from Warwickshire County Cricket Club to say how well organised they thought the whole match was. They were very, very complimentary to York, indeed. This year we have been working with the ECB to try and concentrate four games of cricket within a 12-day period. So there will be two 50-over matches, early in that period, and later on there will be two women’s Hundred matches.
“The important thing about having four days of cricket at York, four days of single cricket, is that we can build an infrastructure similar to the one that was in place for the Championship matches. Therefore, it makes sure that we can spread the overheads much wider than if you just had a one off game. You simply wouldn’t be able to build a temporary stand similar to the one we had for the game there last year.”
Yesterday it was announced that the Shipton Road ground will stage a Rock Festival in June.
Click here to visit the Yorkshire Cricket Club web site
Mark Connors is an award winning poet and novelist from Leeds, UK. He’s had over 160 poems published in magazines, anthologies and webzines.Mark’s debut poetry pamphlet, ‘Life is a Long Song’ was published by OWF Press in 2015. His first full length collection, ‘Nothing is Meant to be Broken’ was published by Stairwell Books in 2017. His second poetry collection, ‘Optics’, was published in 2019 by Yaffle. A joint collection, Reel Bradford, written with fellow writers behind poetry publishers, Yaffle, in partnership with Bradford City of Film, was also published in 2019. Mark is a managing editor at Yaffle. He is also a Bibliotherapist and Writing Workshop Facilitator for both poetry and fiction, and he co-runs the poetry open mic nights Word Club (Leeds) and Shaken in Sheeptown (Skipton), with his partner, Gill Lambert.
Gill Lambert is a poet and teacher from Yorkshire. She has been published widely in print and online. With her partner Mark Connors she runs the poetry nights Shaken in Sheep Town and Word Club. Her pamphlet ‘Uninvited Guests’ was published in 2017 by Indigo Dreams and her debut collection ‘Tadaima’ was published by Yaffle this year.
Kathleen Strafford is a widely published poet, in journals, webzines and anthologies. Her first poetry collection ‘Her Own Language’ was published by Dempsey & Windle in 2018. Kathleen’s new collection ‘Wilderness of Skin’ is published by Yaffle Press. She is the chief editor of Runcible Spoon webzine publishing. Kathleen runs Runcible Spoon open mic at Miners Arms pub in Morley, Leeds. She is co-creator of ‘The Adventures of Dr Bear and Isabelle’ children’s book series.
Nothing to do with BREXIT. It’s another outdoor rock concert with this one taking place at the York Sports Club on Shipton Road over 3 days next June. The Sports Club attracted over 3000 people to a Yorkshire County Cricket match earlier this year with the, mainly mature, audience putting little pressure on transport and policing resources.
Rock concerts are another matter with the highly popular Rod Stewart concert on the Knavesmire a few months ago attracting over 30,000 fans
The organisers claim to have been negotiating the new festival event with the York Council for some time. So we will expect to learn today how it is intended to prevent noise nuisance problems at an event which will extend into the evening period and which is located relatively close to residential properties..
As we’ve seen at Knavesmire events, alcohol misuse can be an issue at large events in the City. Add in access to (off site) toilet facilities, transport links and street cleanliness and you have a major set of issues which the authorities will have to provide assurances on.
Further details of the York Festival, including ticket availability, can be found at this web site www.york-festival.com
The line up for the annual “music showcase”, held on the Knavesmire each year, has already been announced. Rick Astley will take to the stage after racing concludes on 25th July. There will also be acts performing on the evening of 24th July and 27th June (just a week after the Shipton Road event)
The Yorkshire Cricket Club – whose fixture list is announced tomorrow – have already said that they will be returning to Shipton Road next summer. This is likely to be for a couple of one day games (although hopefully not on a pitch which has had the Glastonbury wet weather treatment!)
Julian Barnes’s The Man in the Red Coat delves deep into the artistic life of turn-of the century Paris and London, bringing to life Dr Samuel Jean di Pozzi, dandyish model for John Singer Sargent, and ground-breaking gynaecologist. It’s a superbly-realised hybrid of art criticism and biography; the author comes to York Explore to discuss this new book.
In partnership with Waterstones York
Book online only
£20 to include a copy of the The Man in the Red Coat
