Now its 5th year, the Festival has stretched even higher this year. When we say, Ladies and Gentleman, that we have reached for the stars, we are not indulging in light-hearted persiflage, jocular badinage or any old flannel.

2008 sees the fortieth anniversary celebrations of the celebrated all-male combination of chanteurs known to you, me and the Lord High Executioner as the King Singers. This brilliant group of vocal musicians will perform in our fair town of Eastbourne for the very first time. This stout body of men has been hoarding a voluminous stock of Victorian ditties, both plangent and comic, against this very visit. St. Saviour’s and St. Peter’s church will echo and re-echo to their angelic harmonies and the ringing applause of the enthusiastic audience of aficionados.

Not content with the King Singers, Ladies and Gentlemen, your Victorian Festival directors have acquired the lustrous services of Emma Johnson, M.B.E. The vivacious, pulchritudinous and brilliantly talented Miss Johnson will bring her clarinet and her accompanist, Mr. John Lenehan, to the Sunshine Coast to give us a luminescent programme of Victorian variety in mood, key, tempo and intensity. Miss Johnson will appear in Eastbourne fresh from a three day chamber music festival in Dublin. The Irish recognise a great musician when they hear one!

For those of you who partake of televisual refreshments of the more refined variety, Mr. Paul Atterbury, of Antiques Roadshow fame, will be on hand to regale us with some of the secrets of the programme and the trade. In addition to great musicians of deserved international repute, the Eastbourne Victorian Festival will present Mr. Gerry Badger, author of the BBC book of the BBC 2 series, ‘The Genius of Photography’. Mr. Badger is a recognised authority on the history of ‘painting with light’. A great photographer in his own right (Mr. Edward Weston would have welcomed him into the f64 group with alacrity and a cry of ‘welcome’), Mr. Badger may be found in a distant field, his 4x5 photographic apparatus of wood and brass, perched on its sturdy tripod, pointed at some unfortunate, blasted oak. On this occasion he will illuminate us with his views on Victorian photography.

Local stars will shine brightly once more. The Victoria Plums (Liza Hobbs, Pat Williams and Michael Chance) have agreed to appear. Their scintillating show of music, verse, drama and humour will grace the boards of the Under Ground Theatre, the throbbing heart of our Festival. Also there Impresarios Allison and Patrick will produce Victoria, Empress of India, An evocation of the Raj.

One of the great hits of last year saw the union of Romy McCabe, chanteuse extraordinaire, with The Sussex Harmonisers. The directors of the Eastbourne Victorian Festival are moving heaven and earth to effect a re-union of these celestial bodies!

Richard Ormrod and Mary Hofman will exceed their triumph of last year with their piano and violin duets. This handsome couple offer musical excitement a-plenty at the Under Ground Theatre.

And those who remember the Festival of 2006 will rejoice to learn that the Festival Choir will be returning to All Saints’ Chapel in the grounds of the former hospital of that name. Berkeley Homes, the present owners and developers of the Meads site (and sponsors of the Eastbourne Victorian festival), have kindly allowed the Festival Choir to return to the scene of former triumphs. The Chapel will glow like a new jewel.

The Gilbert and Sullivan Society enjoy a great reputation locally and their G & S concerts at the Festival have only served to enhance their status. Their selection from the creative duo’s oeuvre is both entertaining and educational.

And our ever-popular series of talks at the Eastbourne Society’s Heritage Centre will include offerings from John Shaw, Michael Kaye and Michael Diamond, who will uncover the dark side of the Victorian Music Hall. Gil Darby, who fascinated a full house at the Under Ground Theatre last year with a presentation about jewellery, will return to introduce us to the wonders of Victorian ceramics.

Finally the Festival is extended this year to include the grand concert at the Congress Theatre by the Eastbourne Symphony Orchestra. After their usual film music presentation in the first half, the Orchestra will accompany John York in a stirring account of Tchaikovsky’s Concerto No. 1.

Once again Her Majesty Queen Victoria has agreed to grace our Festival with her imperial presence. This year Southern Rail has invited Her Majesty to make the journey from Victoria Station in London to our splendid terminus. The Queen will be accompanied by her ladies-in-waiting and her lone piper. (Word has it that the piper has learned another skirl this year.)