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Food Review: An excellent Sunday roast at The Geese by Ellie Haine

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In terms of atmosphere and food, The Geese has it all. You cannot exactly say that the pub is particularly tucked away, with it only being a five-minute walk away from the level. It is also not a hidden gem – it regularly features on lists of the best Sunday roast in Brighton and always seems busy. I have to say, it certainly is one of the best that I have had in a while, and I make a mean roast myself.

The meat-based roasts were gorgeous, but they do plenty of vegetarian and vegan friendly options. A family friend got the vegan sausages and said that they were lovely. The roast garlic and thyme chicken were plentiful and had a beautiful flavour. You really could taste the herbs used. And the portion size! I mean, I functionally had almost half a chicken to myself. It is a permanent fixture on the menu, and I highly recommend it if you love chicken. Or even do not, it was that good. I eat a lot of chicken, and trust me, it is worth getting. The lamb is not a permanent fixture on the menu, but I would also recommend getting it if it is on the menu. It was a perfect balance of plenty of meat, and fat. It was beautifully tender, and I am sure even my grandad would have been happy with it which is saying something.

Now, onto the accoutrements. The cauliflower cheese was probably the best one that I have had in a restaurant. It was perfectly cheesy and was gluten free as well so that’s always a plus. They clearly used a good strong cheddar, which just elevated it perfectly. And I am from Somerset, so I know my cheese. My only wish is that it also included broccoli – although there is a separate broccoli cheese on the menu. The carrots were cooked nicely but they were a little bit plain in my opinion. The cabbage was hidden under the meat (or alternatives), but it was nice. Admittedly, I am not the biggest fan of cooked red cabbage, so I wasn’t particularly impressed with that part of the dinner. However, my mother and our family friend did enjoy it, so you’ll have to take their word for it. The roast potatoes were wonderfully crispy and are also probably one of the best roasties I have had. Once again, this is saying something because I really love roasties. The Yorkshire puddings were pretty good, and they did come with the vegan sausages so that’s always a plus. I will say, the bottoms were a little bit stodgy, and I have had better. They were probably the weakest point of the roast, and that is saying something.

Overall, it was a brilliant roast, even if we did not make it to desert. I would highly recommend the short walk to The Geese on a Sunday, just for the roasties on their own. But remember to book in advance – they are always popular.

16 Southover St, Brighton and Hove, Brighton BN2 9UA

https://thegeesebrighton.com/

Brighton Festival, Brighton Life, Theatre

Nadine Shah and The Brighton Festival by Jed Novick and Gilly Smith

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“I’m a little breathless”, whispered Ganavya to a packed audience as she joined her harpist and double bass combo on stage. “It’s probably because I’m a little heart-broken. I may need your help tonight. Would you sing with me?”  

Ganavya, a New York born, Tamil Nadu-raised sonic shapeshifting multi-instrumentalist and guilt tripper and star of Indian music, supporting reigning queen Aruna Sairam was probably the show of the Festival. Hard-bitten cynics in that audience have since confessed that they did sing with her. My friend and I sang with her. Everyone sang. And as we did, so her breath returned, filling her lungs with a soaring song of heartache that rocked the Theatre Royal, a transcendent mix of spiritual jazz and South Asian devotional music that many of us may never have heard before. Yes, it was in Tamil and in Hindi. Yes, we understood every word.  

The Brighton Festival. It’s one of the highlights of the calendar, but it’s difficult. How do you know what to go to? A reworking of Philip Glass and Ravi Shankar’s “Passages” aside, there were no big “must see that” shows, and if you didn’t know your South Asian arts scene, Anoushka Shankar’s Festival was a bit of guesswork. There’s absolutely no doubt there was some marvellous stuff – as evidenced by the Sairam and Ganavya gig, but if you’re not an aficionado of Indian music, would you have known that was going to be such a hot show?  

There’s something else– let’s call it May Fatigue. There’s so much going on in Brighton in May. The Festival, the Great Escape, the Fringe… the Open Houses. Yes, the Open Houses. A lovely thing to do, seeing some art, nosing round other people’s homes. And it might be free, but you’re out and being out, maybe you’ll stop for a drink. Or a bite.   So yes, lots going on and all demand your attention and your time and your energy and, maybe more importantly, all demand your wallet. Nothing’s cheap. We went to the Spiegel Gardens last night and bought a bottle of wine to share. £39.50.  

For a whole month, the streets are alive with the sound of, well, everything. Not just music but everything, and if the Weather Gods smile, there’s no finer place to be. Just maybe… it could all be spread out a bit more? The Great Escape in June maybe?  

Anyway, back to the Festival. The best non-music thing I saw was Emma Rice’s Wise Children production of North by Northwest, also at the Theatre Royal. A triumph of parody and comic timing and, well, you can read all about it here in The Mighty Whistler.  https://westhillwhistler.com/2025/05/17/north-by-northwest-at-the-theatre-royal/

Saturday night’s showstopping gig was Nadine Shah at The Dome. Again, Mercury nominated she might well be, but she’s not “Bloody hell, cancel everything, this we have to see”. As it turned out, she was great and, while we didn’t have to cancel anything, it was very cool. And this is the glory of the creative directorship of the Brighton Festival; if Anoushkar’s already shown you her record collection and opened a door into a whole new world of music and arts, how could Nadine Shah be anything other than an exciting new find?  

Like a cross between Shirley Bassey, PJ Harvey and Patti Smith, South Shields-born Shah is as loud and opinionated as any girl from the Geordie Shores. But her mash up of her own singular influences from Afrobeat to Eastern scales – apparently her father sang Urdu ghazals, a form of Arabic poetry, around the house as she grew up – became a roar of pain as she took us with her on her personal journey of grief, rehab and recovery as she pranced like a dressage pony across the stage. The music was hard, her voice sharp, the roar raw.  

The spiritual delicacy of Sairam and Gavanya, the joy and verve of North by Northwest, the raw noise of Nadine Shah. All in one Festival. And how cool is that?

Brighton, Green Door Store, Hope and Ruin, The Great Escape

The Great Escape by Alex Hill

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Down every street in the city, venues are alive with the sound of live music and hordes of people queue outside standing around talking and smoking. It was, of course, The Great Escape. Over 450 different acts taking the stage in all the best pubs and clubs over four days.

If the weather plays nicely, there’s nothing like a Great Escape weekend. You set out with an idea of going here to see that, but then you meet someone who says you really should go there to see something else and then… Well, who knows  what happens then.

A typical Great Escape night tends to include a lot of drifting around venues in search of a band you’ve never heard but you’ve heard of. And as you’re halfway there, maybe going to the Hope & Ruin, there’s an alert on the phone app. The venue’s full. There’s a queue. Maybe you’d like to go to The Green Door Store instead.

It truly is a cross-city festival, and you may just find yourself doing that; especially during the particularly busy times if you’re intent on finding new and exciting gigs like I was. If you don’t mind the strain on your legs, and if chancing upon interesting new sounds is something that grabs your fancy, then the festival is definitely for you. You’re bound to discover many great bands you were previously unaware of.

You’re not always guaranteed to find that gig you were hoping to see. Late one night, feeling dejected due to not having the required wristband for a gig near the seafront – something the festival app neglected to tell us – myself and a few friends ended up at the Fiddlers Elbow for a curiously busy gig. We found ourselves in the company of an obnoxiously loud garage rock gig which was awfully mixed by the sound engineer and with frankly poor song writing from the band (who were, I believe, from Canada). The band just weren’t that great, but weren’t helped by long and droning instrumental parts drowning out the vocalist and… It was all too loud. We escaped, checked our timetables only to discover to our own chagrin that there weren’t any more gigs on – onto the next day.

Organisation is key to having a great Escape. A friend had an Excel sheet – really, an Excel sheet. All times and places and descriptions. I didn’t have an Excel sheet. I had a friend who said we had to go to Jubilee Square to see hot local band Slag. We got there to find that hot local band Slag were playing Jubilee Square. Or rather, had played Jubilee Square. Yesterday. Instead, we saw Azamiah, a smooth, laid-back jazz funk band. Good, but not as nature intended. Next year, Excel.

The Hope and Ruin was religiously hosting gigs, in both the upstairs and downstairs bar and I saw a lot of good bands here I’d never heard of before. No complaint from me. That’s the other thing about The Great Escape. You get to see loads of bands and very possibly you were told who they were and very probably you really remembered who they were and… who were they?

The bands at the Hope where all punk and hardcore; screaming the house down and getting the audience fired up. With each band delivering half an hour sets, I think I saw four or five different bands here – Pleasure Inc.from Norwich played funky headbangers with a Rage Against the Machine type feel; Jools were an intense, dual vocalist modern hardcore band; Really Big Really Clever were a midwestern emo sounding four piece who made the crowd go wild. The Molotov’s were also playing, but they were stuck upstairs.

In Green Door, where the uneven cobbled flooring tends to make your night a bit more like you’ve had a drink when you’ve drank enough to make you unsteady, various great bands played as part of both the Alternative Escape and the main festival. With so many gigs on in such a short time frame, it’s quite hard to plan where to go; especially with so many overlapping time slots – navigating the festival effectively requires incredible foresight I seemed to lack as a first timer. Next year, Excel.

My feet were complaining, my head also a little, but had a fantastic time and saw loads of great bands I otherwise wouldn’t have had the chance to see. It’s probably been said before, but if the weather plays nicely, there’s nothing like a Great Escape weekend.  

Elif Shafak, There Are Rivers In The Sky

Charleston Festival: Elif Shafak by Gilly Smith

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“A novelist’s job, says Booker Prize nominee, Elif Shafak at the Charleston Festival, “is not to shy away from the difficult questions, but to create a space, and then step back for the reader to find the answers.”

I’m not sure that there are many spaces like the Charleston Festival, home to the Bloomsbury set’s Vanessa Bell, Duncan Grant and Quentin Bell where the really big questions are pondered in such thought-provoking surroundings. A wander through the old farmhouse before the Festival events finds the ghosts of London aristocracy conscientiously objecting to war, creating art on the backs of doors, on tables, on the side of the bath and playing with their sexuality in the bosom of East Sussex’s South Downs. Changing the conversation, if in a rather refined way, is what Charleston is still all about.

In the Festival tent, French born Turk, Elif Shafak is joined by Peruvian lawyer and author, Monica Feria-Tinta to talk about their latest books as part of the Voices of Resistance series. Monica, a refugee from what she calls a ‘godless’ country is the author of A Barrister for the Earth, a title she has earned since coming the UK as a refugee and fighting for eco-justice, including, among other victims of development and pollution, East Sussex’s River Ouse.

But the audience packing the tent on this late spring afternoon is here for Elif , the author famous for the intricate narratives that transcend geographical and emotional boundaries. A powerful voice in contemporary literature, she’s a thorn in the side of Turkey’s conservative government, fighting for LGBTQ+ rights, exploring themes of identity and belonging, blending East and West, and challenging the norms of both through the personal with the political. She’s one of Turkey’s strongest advocates for women’s rights and social justice.

There are Rivers in the Sky, her latest book, which is shortlisted for this year’s Booker Prize, is her best yet. A multi-generational sweep across empires and peoples from The Tigris to The Thames, the book uses water as a device to connect the stories of persecution and power, opportunity, art and love to transcend the worst of times. “You want to know its story,” she tells us about the drop of water that marks the beginning of each section. “You want to see the whole world through it.”

“Water gives us an illusion of abundance,” she tells us. But, she reminds us that it has always been used in war; the poisoning of water and the flooding of lands can kill a collective memory. And with drought and flash floods becoming an everyday story of climate change, she suddenly summons up the ethereal beauty of Leila, the Yazidi seer in her book. “Water wars are the future” she whispers. And we believe her.

The Q&A is hard core. Someone asks which to prioritise – the housing needs of local people, or the rivers locked in the developers’ sights. Someone else asks Monica what hope felt like in her godless homeland. “A light”, Monica says, and when she tells us that it’s why she’s here right now, on stage with Elif Shafak to talk about eco-justice, a shard of that light seems to brighten the tent. A professor says that she is naturally pessimistic – how could she lie to her young students about the state of the world – and asks Elif if she has hope. “I’m naturally pessimistic too”, says Elif. “I’m Turkish. It’s in my DNA.” And everyone laughs. “We live in the age of angst”, she says. “We need to stop Googling for answers. We need to read books and listen to podcasts, and have real discussion about what we find.” And not to know the answer is the goal, she says, with that look of Leila descending again. “Knowledge is slow to come.”

Great Escape, Pete Doherty

The Great Escape: Pete Doherty by Alex Hill

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It was a sunny Wednesday in Brighton, along the beach swathes of people waited in eager anticipation in a fenced off area. I mingled amongst them, armed with a predictably overpriced lager and a worryingly dwindling supply of cigarettes. As part of The Great Escape’s spotlight shows, Pete Doherty was playing – enough cause to warrant the self-detriment – it was going to be a good gig.

Like a festival within a festival, there were heaps of different bands playing in tents around the site, and while this made it impossible to see all the acts, it did mean you could catch a listen from outside before you braved the stuffy, crowded gazebos. We saw a couple of great sounding bands leading up to Doherty’s gig – all being part of Strap-Originals, his eclectic record label.

Vona Vella were first up; an upbeat indie band with bright sounding guitars, heavy bass riffs and joint vocalists with a Fleetwood Mac style on stage tension. Broken up by light-hearted monologues from the talented vocalist Izzy Davis (“this song’s about someone you really like… but they’re kinda ugly”). Wailing guitars, chirpy bass and fast paced drumming accompanying the harmonizing vocals are all charming features of this up-and-coming indie rock quintet.

Moving to the main tent just in time for Warmduscher’s set – these guys were really cool. Driven by booming synths, powerful basslines and wild sound effects overlaid by the sunglasses-clad front man Craig Higgins commanding the crowd with conversational rapping delivered in a charismatic American twang. Strobe lights illuminated the crowd as they bounced to the bass and heavily distorted synthesisers. With the sound and the attitude, they should’ve been playing a much larger venue – which would’ve in turn prevented the odious people behind from feeling the need to constantly shimmy up against me. They were funky, heavy and energetic in equal measure. Write the name down, remember it.

Next up was the main event. Doherty was joined on stage by Mike Joyce of The Smiths making his first stage appearances in 22 years – you’d never have known the way he hit the drums for the opener ‘Killamangiro’. It was electric. Doherty is clearly at his best when joined by a full band on stage. Playing a mix of Babyshambles and his solo songs, Doherty is clearly at his best when joined by a full band on stage. Perhaps strangely he didn’t play any Libertines ones – too many ghosts? – although the brand-new songs off his album, and a couple of Smiths classics – Panic and How Soon is Now?  -more than made up for it.

Without a guitar in hand for most the show, he instead opted to twirl a cane or prance around the stage carelessly waving the mic in his signature fashion. His confident stage presence and ability to control the crowd was evident as he went through the bangers like ‘Fuck Forever’. While the songs of his brand-new album are definitely more hit or miss; it was interesting to hear him exploring new sounds and genres, bearing a clear country influence. With trumpets and a glockenspiel accompanying the songs, the man’s sound has clearly come a long way from the raw-garage rock sound of The Libertines. Bringing his happy, tail-wagging dog on stage at the end while the band did their bows – it was an adorable end to the night.

Everything you ever wanted to know about life in Brighton (OK, and Hove)