A Summer's Evening in Gloucestershire

The county's pre-war poets, read aloud in Cirencester church

The Dymock Poets are one of Gloucestershire's quieter claims to cultural history. In the years before the First World War, writers including Robert Frost, Edward Thomas, Rupert Brooke, Wilfrid Gibson and Lascelles Abercrombie gathered in the village of Dymock and produced some of the most-read pastoral poetry in the English language. Most of them died in the war, or were changed by it. The work still reads as if it knows what's coming.

This summer evening puts those poems back in Gloucestershire. Jonathan Dimbleby reads the Dymock Poets at Cirencester's Church of St John the Baptist, with music from pianist Clare Hammond and the Oriel Singers. The event raises money for the High Sheriff of Gloucestershire's charitable fund.

Clare Hammond has built her reputation on recordings of 20th-century British piano music, and brings considerable concert weight to the evening. Dimbleby's readings will have plenty to breathe against.

Friday 17 July 2026 · Church of St John the Baptist, Market Place, Cirencester, Gloucestershire GL7 2NX · 7:30–9pm