The Festival spans the fortnight from 23rd May to Saturday 7th June. It’s a
mix of theatre, literature, dance, circus, comedy, music, film and family
events. Highlights will include a production of Much Ado About Nothing by
Shakespeare’s Globe, talks by popular broadcasters Peter Snow and Kate Adie
and comedy from Mark Steel. Classical music is represented by conductor Sir
John Eliot Gardiner among others and the American jazz singer and songwriter
Madeleine Peyroux will perform on the middle Friday.

The Festival was born in July 1973 and more than 1.5 million people have
attended in the years since. Events are mostly staged within reach of the
Cathedral but in 2012 the Festival illuminated two of Wiltshire’s white
horses and hosted a 100-mile artist-led walk that spanned all eight of the
horses carved into the county’s chalky earth.

For me, it’s rather special to be back in Salisbury. As a small boy I used to
come here for 30-strong family Christmases and Easters that would sprawl on
for three days. My late great aunt lived on one of the roads that slope down
to the city. My cousins have kept the house but it lies empty at times and
so I’m staying here alone. Where once I waited excitedly for the tinkle of
the bell that signalled Father Christmas’s arrival, I am now listening
attentively to the unexplained noises of the house and hoping they’re just
the heating system.

Walking down to the Festival opening I took the route I used to follow for
Midnight Mass. The recently refurbished Cathedral rises up above the roofs
and it is now silver-white in the evening light. I used to look out for the
former Tory Prime Minister, Sir Edward Heath, on Christmas Eve and think I
even spotted him once or twice. He was the man who took the country into the
European Economic Community without a referendum in 1973. Heath died in 2005
but his listed home, which sits within the Cathedral’s grounds, has just
been reopened to the public.

The centre of Salisbury has the feel of an old market town and its streets are
busy with shops that spread out from the Cathedral. I’ll be interested to
discover what sort of buy-in there is from local residents and just how
international the Festival turns out to be.

For more information visit salisburyfestival.co.uk