ADDED drama was provided by a heavy downpour during the first half of an outdoors night at the opera on Saturday in aid of Stepping Stones School for children with special educational needs.

Special guests at the glitzy event in the grounds of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s former home Undershaw, Hindhead were Haslemere MP Jeremy Hunt and his wife Lucia. The Tory joined fellow patrons and friends of DFN Charitable Foundation, which mounted Opera Brava’s sparkling production of The Marriage of Figaro in their pop-up theatre at the home of DFN’s Stepping Stones Upper School,

The charity raised £7,200 for the school from the silent auction held during the black-tie dinner in the long interval.

Also at the event was independent publisher Steve Emecz, whose not-for-profit MX Publishing’s New Book of Sherlock Holmes Stories raises money for the school. More than 100 leading authors, united by their love of Conan Doyle, have contributed to the collection which has sold millions of copies around the world.

Stepping Stones parent David Forbes-Nixon, who founded the charity, took to the stage at the start of the show with his son Charlie, now a pupil at Undershaw.

Speaking a year after Mr Hunt officially opened a fully refurbished and extended Undershaw, Mr Forbes-Nixon said the school had doubled in size – but it was so popular it was still oversubscribed.

Father and son took it in turns to read the ‘Starfish ’ poem with its motivational message on how one small action can make a world of difference.