Skip to main content
Bloomsbury Festival

Our 20th Anniversary Festival ran from 1 - 31 October 2026

Type at least 2 characters to search.

↑↓ to navigate · Enter to open · Esc to close
Page banner image

Blackout

Clare Best, Ben Cordell, Ábel MGE

Location

Holy Cross Church

98 Cromer Street , WC1H 8JU

Times

Thursday, 22 October 2026

19:30 – 21:00

Ticket Price

£7.00 - £25.00

Book Now

A new audio documentary-drama exploring love and duty during WW2, followed by Q&A chaired by broadcaster and journalist David Baker.

In 1943, between flying missions over Germany, John – a young RAF bomber pilot – wrote letters to Heather, the young woman he had just fallen in love with. She kept all of them. Eighty years later, her daughter – the writer Clare Best – chanced upon the letters, and found herself inside a story she only half knew.

Blackout is her response: an audio documentary-drama that traces what survives of a passion lost to war. Archival materials are combined with new writing, original music, and sound design to create an intimate portrait of love, danger, and the silences families keep.

Script: Clare Best

Music: Ábel MGE

Sound: Ben Cordell

Also see our sister event "Making an Art Piece from Historical Letters”, on Sunday 25 October where the creators discuss the creation of this work.

Share this event

Link copied

Others also viewed

Dickensian London: The Magic Lantern City
Exhibition
51 dates, 21 Oct – 31 Dec, 10.00 am

Dickensian London: The Magic Lantern City

Exhibition included with museum entry - see link

This exhibition explores the world of Dickens’s London and how inextricably linked the writer is with our perception of it.

Visionary Landscapes
Exhibition Free Walk-in
Mon – Sat, 3 Oct – 16 Dec

Visionary Landscapes

Visionary Landscapes explores the relationship between landscape, imagination and vision.

Learn More Walk-in
EM Forster's Legacy of Connection: Unseen Memorabilia
Exhibition Free Walk-in
40 dates, 1 Oct – 17 Dec

EM Forster's Legacy of Connection: Unseen Memorabilia

An exhibition of unseen memorabilia and memories of EM Forster and paintings by Jim Buckingham.

Learn More Walk-in

Connect with us

Email: admin@bloomsburyfestival.org.uk

Bloomsbury Festival Senate House Malet Street London, WC1E 7HU