A SHOW mixing words and music based on a classic book comes to the stage.

The Village Quire will use Precious Bane by Mary Webb to form an evening of spoken word and four-part singing in Colwall Village Hall, near Malvern, on Saturday, March 15.

The story of love and ambition is set in Shropshire's lakelands at a time just after the Napoleonic wars, mixing faith and folklore, pantheism and personal advancement.

Prue Sarn is blessed; kind and gentle, loving and giving, bright and brave and strong, witty and sensitive and with a figure like an apple-blossom fairy but she is also cursed, cursed with a hare lip.

Village Quire sing unaccompanied West Gallery music, folk harmony, shape note and catches, with an influence from the 18th century.

Doors open at 7pm for a 7.30pm start and there will be a licensed bar selling local real ale.

Funds will be raised for the Hereford-based charity Concern Universal, which is an international development organisation tackling poverty from the grassroots.

Tickets are £10 from the Colwall office of John Goodwin estate agents on 01684 540300, Concern Universal 01432 355111 or at concern-universal.org.