General bookings opened today for Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee at the Canterbury Festival. This is a show I’ve devised which recreates the tour around London taken by Queen Victoria on 22 June 1897, to mark the sixtieth year of her reign. In taking the audience around London, the show integrates photographs, eye-witness testimony and original films (from the BFI National Archive) of the procession, shown in correct sequence. The eye-witness testimony, including the words of Kier Hardie, Edward Burne-Jones, Molly Hughes, Beatrice Webb, Mark Twain and Queen Victoria herself, is read by Neil Brand (an actor as well as our most celebrated silent film accompanist) and Mo Heard, with Stephen Horne playing the piano. And I’m the presenter.

The show is taking place Friday 19th October, 8.00pm, at the International Study Centre, which is in the precincts of Canterbury Cathedral. Tickets are an entirely reasonable £12, and full details of how to book are on the Festival website.