The Border Readers is an association of regionally based professional actors who since 2018 have been presenting themed audio narratives in libraries, art centres, galleries, hostelries, village halls, theatres, pubs and historic houses across the English border counties and occasionally into Scotland.
DARK SKY TALES
The first ever North-east Dark Skies Festival runs from 13 – 21 February. It aims to illuminate and promote the extraordinary delights of our night skies to locals & visitors alike. More info: https://www.northeastdarkskies.co.uk/
As a locally based cultural initiative we’re excited to join forces with our enterprising friends at First & Last Brewery Bellingham on the evening of Wednesday 18th February to give readings of two contrasting short stories….both set in the dead of night! Tickets £10. Suitable for families with older children (11 upwards). Doors open 6 for 6.30 start.
The Phantom Coach by Amelia B Edwards is a Victorian gothic shocker played out on the snow bound Pennine moors. In Helen Dunmore’s contemporary story Protection a mother goes all out to shield her girls from danger at their isolated countryside home.
A popular community hub hosting a range of activities, the F&L’s tap room is the sort of space that well suits our intimate style of live audio entertainment. Readers Stephen and Wynne both live nearby and are big fans of the venue. More information and tickets via: F&L Brewery, Old Ambulance Station, Foundry Yard, Bellingham NE48 2DA Telephone: 01434 – 239500 / info@firstandlastbrewery.co.uk
MARCH 2026 MINI-TOUR
Delighted to be making our debut with Shore Lines at two pitch perfect venues during March. Stephen and Janine will be reading in the old library, next to the cafe bar, in the Tudor part of the Grade 1 listed building on behalf of the Auckland Project. An appropriate setting in such a beautifully restored heritage building, so very excited to do our thing in such a popular cultural hotspot.
The Old Library, Auckland Palace, Bishop Auckland, Co Durham
Friday 13th March
hhtps://www.aucklandproject.org / enquiries@aucklandproject.org
Enquiries: 01388 743750
Heron Theatre, Beetham, Westmorland
Friday 27th March @7.30
https://theherontheatre.com/whats-on/category/upcoming-events/list/
Box Office: 015395 64283 / Ticketsource Booking: 0333 666 3366
The Heron is a much loved community run theatre at the heart of an attractive South Lakes village, situated in a former C18th grammar school turned theatre from 1948. Stephen is joined by Roberta and Helen and ‘Shore Lines’ is part of a varied programme of films, music and drama staged in the raked 78 seat auditorium….Perfect for our kind of intimate audio event.
Shore Lines is a contrasting, always entertaining, line up of stories from our brilliant writer friends Ann Cleeves, Linda Cracknell, Tony Glover and Jo Scott. Ann’s haunting crime story Mud is set in her home county of Devon in the land of the two rivers, while Linda’s poignant narrative Crossing the Bar, inspired by Tennyson’s classic poem, reflects her own family’s maritime history and was originally commissioned by and broadcast on BBC Radio 4.
We are particularly proud to have commissioned the other two stories, both set on the Northumberland coast. Tony Glover’s The Weather Gleam follows a young couple’s relationship during a visit to Holy Island as seen through the eyes of Charlie, the heroine’s faithful Bedlington terrier. Anchored in Amble, will Jenny ever set sail?….Jo Scott’s romantic comedyTouch and Go draws on her own background as an experienced yachtswoman.
Some audience comments from library venues: ‘Wonderful – A great choice of stories and such a pleasure to be read to.’…Excellent – both readers were clear (I’m hard of hearing). Thoroughly enjoyed the evening. thank you!’…’Great – loved the ‘stage’ set too!…Very enjoyable – a different experience.’ ….’Exceptional actors. Great stories with a strong connection to the area.’ ‘Enthralled by the storylines and a sense of being in the story.’ …’A wonderful evening in a lovely venue.’…’Atmospheric set. Great stories, well read.’ ‘I love listening to a story. I like the intimate setting, the sense of place in the stories and the voices of the storytellers’. ‘Magic – what a pleasure listening’
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WRITERS & STORIES
Ann Cleeves awards include the CWA Diamond Dagger, the highest honour in British crime writing, in recognition of the sustained excellence of her work. She has written distinct crime series as well as stand-alone novels, and is especially well known for her Shetland and Vera Stanhope series of police procedural novels. Her Two Rivers crime series, The Long Call, andThe Rising Tide, set in north Devon, have also been televised by ITV. http://www.anncleeves.com Some background on our story Mud – which is set on the estuary of the River Taw – in Ann’s own words:
‘We moved around a bit when I was a child so it’s hard to tell what made me. My dad was a teacher in tiny rural primary schools…. It’s hard to be the headmaster’s kid in a school of 30 pupils, most of whom have grown up together. When I was 11 we landed up in north Devon. I’d moved to the grammar school in Barnstaple and for the first time made real friends. Looking back, I remember the summers, family days on the beach, picnics and space. The hit of a good wave as I body-surfed towards the shore. I was never a sporty girl, but I loved the shock of cold, salt water, the magic of swimming in the sea.’
‘Later there were teenage parties on the beach, bonfires built below the tideline, too much cheap wine. Our parents must have driven miles over those summers to collect us and see us home safe; there was no public transport after dark. In the sixth form I fell in love with another student, a brilliant musician, and I can see him bent over his guitar, caught in the light of the fire and the setting sun. It was the early 70s and we were all hippies at heart. For a while afterwards, nothing lived up to those glorious days. We knew they were special even while they were happening, swore we’d keep in touch. In fact, one of my closest friends does come from that time and when I go to see her, the smell of salt and mud from the Taw transports me back. I’m a girl again in an uncomfortable brown uniform, a heavy satchel weighing me down, walking along the river bank to school. Happy’. https://anncleeves.com/
Linda Cracknell is a writer of fiction, non-fiction and radio drama as well as a teacher of creative writing in various settings. This includes a regular workshop in the Moroccan Sahara and courses which integrate walking and outdoor exploration with creative writing. Landscape, place and memory are key themes in her work, as embodied in the recently re-released Doubling Back: Paths trodden in memory (Saraband 2024). She moved from Devon to Scotland in 1990, and has lived in Highland Perthshire for nearly 30 years. Although her fiction often has a Scottish setting – Call of the Undertow (2013) in coastal Caithness; The Other Side of Stone (2021) in a Perthshire woollen mill. Linda’s memoir Sea Marked: Throwing a line to the mother ship has just been published. https://saraband.net/sb-title/sea-marked/ It includes this account of her seafaring ancestry in the Taw-Torridge estuary of north Devon, where our short story Crossing the Bar is set.
Linda writes: ‘Joseph Conrad refers to the pilot as ‘trustworthiness personified’, which is unsurprising when local expertise puts so many lives in his hands. This ultimate respect seems to have been in Alfred Lord Tennyson’s mind when he wrote his poem Crossing the Bar at the age of eighty-one from a room with a sea view in Salcombe. The central metaphor is a boat travelling out to sea on a fast-ebbing tide and crossing the Bar with ease, carrying the grateful narrator over the threshold to a peaceful death.
For tho’ from out our bourne of Time and Place / The flood may bear me far, / I hope to see my Pilot face to face / When I have cross’d the bar.
When I was invited by BBC Radio to write a short story in response to a classic poem of my choice, I knew immediately it would be this, not least because my mother had recently passed on Emma Drake (née Chichester’s) leather-bound volume of Tennyson, complete with her monogram. ‘Why don’t you take it?’ she’d said when I went to replace it on the shelf. I was surprised at the time that she wouldn’t want to hold onto such a keepsake from her great-grandmother, but perhaps, it occurs to me now, there’s an age at which we lose attachment to material things and know they will mean more to a younger generation. I decided quickly to set my story around this Chichester matriarch’s homeland and the Bideford Bar, and this sharpened my focus on further visits to the area as I wandered the places close to Braunton where sea and land wrangle with each other. My imagination built upon what I found there’.
‘The main character for the story soon materialised: an elderly woman, daughter of a local pilot. She had enjoyed independent sailing here as a child with strict respect for tidal dangers and the Bar, but was now being curtailed from even minor adventure by arthritis and the cautions of her adult children. Writing a fictional story required me to fully imagine this territory somewhere between the White House, Crow Point and the Bar, between firm sand and tidal rush, life and death. Engaging with it in this way, feeling it in my bones and imagination, seemed to nurture a stronger bond with the place, as fiction writing often does. But it also gave me a greater degree of apprehension on this short literal journey from estuary-port to Bar.’ https://saraband.net/contributor/linda-cracknell/
Tony Glover is a writer and film-maker, born in Northumberland. His BBC Radio play Just a Trim won a Sony Radio Award and earned him the title of BBC North Playwright of the Year. He has also won the first Northern Echo New Novelist of the Year award. Tony has written for television and stage including Year of the Tiger (ITV), Chase Me I’m Chocolate (staged in Dartington); Slappers (Unity Theatre Liverpool) and The Stars that Surround Us (Newcastle Playhouse). His first film, Posh Monkeys, won a Royal Television Society award and the IAC International Film & Video Festival Gold Seal Award. It was promoted by the British Council at international film festivals. Irene’s Story, a documentary about bi-polar disorder, won a Millennium Award. Tony has six published crime novels, all featuring DI Kitty Lockwood; Cars Just Want to be Rust; The Luxury of Murder ; Footsteps of the Hunter ; The Hunger of Ravens ; Dark Water Dreaming ; The Wilds. The Border Readers commissioned Tony to pen us a story set on the coast and we were delighted that as a native born resident of Northumberland he set his tale – The Weather Gleam – on Holy Island. https://tonygloverwrites.co.uk/
Tony writes: ‘I’m fascinated to know where stories come from. My own writing method is quite simple. First I conjure a character. I pick a name – I can’t start until I have their name – though it may change…Then I put him or her in a setting and ask myself ‘How did they get there?’ Bit by bit the mist clears and I see them more clearly. The most important question is ‘What do they want?’ That gives me the beginning. And do they get it? Which reveals the ending. ….Of course all of this may change…At the moment a pair of Red Kites are circling above our house, hanging in the wind. They’re searching for carrion for their chicks and bits of tat to build and repair their nests. Among the sticks and twigs, feathers and bones they weave strands of white plastic into the mix. That’s the way I work. I take awkward situations and put my characters in them. I take scraps of overheard dialogue and put them in the mouths of my imaginary people. I knew a couple of friends were walking to Holy Island. I was curious about what they might say on that long walk across the sands. I believe that stories are there – lying hidden, just beneath the surface, waiting to be uncovered. Writers dig them up’. https://tonygloverwrites.co.uk/
Jo Scott studied English Language and Literature at the University of Southampton and works as a freelance heritage interpretation consultant, based in Northumberland. Jo was the first unpublished author whose work we have presented. Her previous story Leap of Faith was part of our extensive Landlines’ tour (2024/5) and was shortlisted for the prestigious Yeovil Literary Short Story Prize last year. We loved Leap of Faith so much that producer Stephen commissioned Jo to write a short story set on the coast and Touch and Go is the result.
Jo writes:’Touch and Go is a story that explores what happens when Jenny, a single woman of a certain age, starts and then stalls the sailing adventure she’s been planning all her life. Without the support network she’s convinced she needs, Jenny is stranded in Amble. Having grown up in Cornwall and later spending many years messing about in boats, it was an absolute joy to be invited to write a new story set beside the sea to fit this year’s Shorelines theme. While Touch & Go is totally fictional, I inevitably drew on my own sailing experiences to bring Jenny’s story to life – not least having lived for a year in a marina on a lovely old wooden boat called White Dolphin (with a lucky kingfisher as a regular visitor)!
Amble was the obvious location for Jenny’s hiatus, and I credit my sister’s experience of sailing around Britain for that. We caught up with her several times during the trip – including for a cracking sail from Belfast to Dublin – but my fondest memory is meeting up about half way through the trip at Amble Marina. It’s the perfect place for Jenny to be killing time, walking on the beach, exploring the coast and communing with nature.
Writing Touch & Go is also about the power of tradition and superstition in our lives, and how we look for external signs when life gets tough – a regular theme in my writing. It was great fun researching the many superstitions associated with ships and sailing to throw in poor Jenny’s path. I treated most of them with a pinch of salt back in the day but now I’m more circumspect. If I had that pinch of salt right now, I’d ward off bad luck by tossing it straight over my left shoulder. As I am sure Jenny would agree, it’s just not worth the risk, is it?’ https://joscottwriter.wordpress.com/
READERS
Janine Birkett Born in Northumberland and raised in Newcastle, Janine spent her early career touring with Northumberland Theatre Company before joining the Northern Stage Ensemble and performing at Theatre by the Lake; the New Vic Stoke and the Stephen Joseph Theatre Scarborough. In the 1990’s Janine was Byker Grove parent, Maggie Watson for three series; and she played Jenny Elliot, Billy’s mam, in the feature film of Billy Elliot. Other TV appearances include: Emmerdale, Hollyoaks, Holby City, The Royal, Inspector George Gently, Vera and Coronation Street. BBC Radio drama includes the series My Uncle Freddie and the Jarrow March play, A Woman’s Walk. In the last four years Janine has narrated over 100 audio-books, including several by Vera author, Ann Cleeves.
Stephen Tomlin Since qualifying as a specialist teacher from the Central School of Speech & Drama in 1972 until his effective retirement from full time work at the end of 2016, Stephen had performed extensively across the UK in a wide variety and number of television and theatre productions. Audio credits include commercial voiceovers and guest roles in Radio 4’s The Archers, Writing the Century and Home Front alongside many single radio dramas and serials. He has also worked professionally as a producer, director, writer/researcher, role player, teacher, lecturer, presenter and tour guide. Based in Lancaster for four decades, he produced ten indoor promenade Shakespeare as well as annual seasonal entertainments at Lancaster Castle under the Demi-paradise banner between 2000-2016. Since 2017 Stephen has been happily resettled in the Northumberland National Park where he founded, produces and reads for the Border Readers.
ROBERTA KERR Recent theatre includes The Lovesong of Alfred J Hitchcock for New Perspectives UK tour and Brits Off Broadway New York. She has toured with the National Theatre’s production of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time and has played in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, Quartet, The Lady-killers, Hard Times, Talking Heads, Stevie and Norman Conquests in repertory theatres around the North West. TV includes Downton Abbey, Hollyoaks, The Royal, Doctors, EastEnders, Casualty, Emmerdale, Medics & Brookside. Radio: Cottonopolis, Well of Loneliness and The Archers. Roberta is also known for her role as Wendy Crozier in Coronation Street.
Helen Longworth is an actor/musician and composer who trained at RADA. Theatre includes, Unruly Women, The Last Waltz andThe Wife of Usher’s Well (Quondam Theatre). Also Sirens at the Women of The World Festival Hull (Blazon Theatre). Helen has also appeared in Aladdin, Peter Pan, Cinderella: A Fairy Tale, Sleeping Beauty and Grimm Tales for The Dukes Theatre, Lancaster. She also performed on the QM2 in Much Ado about Nothing and Canterbury Tales. Helen composed the music for and appeared in Ladies That Bus, based on real life stories from users of the 555 bus, touring to great success. A second play, Ladies That Dig, toured in 2023. She plays the character of Hannah Riley in BBC Radio 4’sThe Archers. She previously worked with Demi Paradise Productions at Lancaster Castle in the site specificRichard III and having both compiled and appeared in the company’s annual Christmas show Deck The Hall on numerous happy occasions. Helen read at The Gregson, Lancaster (Wed 19 Nov).
ARCHIVE OF PREVIOUS PRODUCTIONS
The readers toured Haunted, classic and contemporary ghost story readings, on and around Halloween in 2018 and again in 2019. During the Covid crisis of 2020/2021 more classic ghost stories were recorded for listening on You Tube. The Border Readers returned to live touring in Spring 2022 with a different theme – Many Deadly Returns, celebrating 21 years of Murder Squad, the north of England’s leading association of crime writers. They continued in 2023 with Murder They Write, more gripping crime stories by Murder Squad co-founders Ann Cleeves, Martin Edwards and Cath Staincliffe. In autumn 2024 & spring of 2025 the readers were back on the road with Land Lines, short stories with a contemporary countryside setting, from Helen Dunmore, Deborah Moggach, Tim Pears, Adam Thorpe & Jo Scott. Our most extensive overall tour to date it played a total of 19 venues across the wider region.
Programmes 2018 – 2022 toured contemporary and classic short stories by: Chez Brenchley, Elizabeth Bowen, Amelia B Edwards, Elizabeth Gaskell, Muriel Gray, Elizabeth Jane Howard, Edith Nesbit, Christine Poulson, Muriel Spark and Oscar Wilde.
Short stories by Ann Cleeves, Martin Edwards, Kate Ellis, Margaret Murphy and Cath Staincliffe
We are always open to play new venues and also welcome private bookings to suit particular requirements. Use the Contact page and Stephen will get back to you ASAP
STEPHEN TOMLIN 