Скачать или смотреть Folkestone Fragments: Echoes of Art, Memory and Time Travel by the Sea

Once a glittering stopover for artists, musicians and writers en route to the Continent, Folkestone holds stories half-forgotten by history yet richly alive in memory. In this illustrated talk, Dr Emre Aracı — music historian, composer, and long-time resident of the town — guides us through the elegant remnants of Folkestone’s Edwardian past.

From Chopin’s fleeting farewell in 1848 to Oscar Wilde’s flower-strewn welcome for Sarah Bernhardt, the town emerges as a coastal stage where figures once stepped ashore with both purpose and poetry. Drawing on newly uncovered archival material and personal reflection, Dr Aracı reveals how this quiet retreat became an unlikely crossroads of European artistic life.

The talk is closely connected with his recent book, Folkestone Fragments, in which he explores the town’s layered musical, literary and social history while weaving in his own journey from Istanbul to the Kentish coast. Through memory, exile, coincidence and rediscovery, past and present gently converse.

A nostalgic and evocative tribute to a seaside town caught between time and tide.

Talk given to the New Folkestone Society on 29 November 2025.