Between 1935 and 1981 a nativity play made up of music, readings and drama was presented at the family home of conductor John Eliot Gardiner in Fontmell Magma, Dorset. Gardiner's enterprising parents were apparently able to persuade local schoolchildren, farmers and farmhands, local actors and amateur musicians to prepare performances of 16th-century polyphony, readings of Milton, and French and ...