Contact Alastair
For periods of the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, parts of the south east of England were almost lawless, with contraband travelling unchecked in long trains of horses and armed men from the coast towards London. Opening with words sung from Kipling’s poem, When the Gentlemen go by, Alastair brings to this collection of stories and songs of south coast smuggling a collection of tales and ballads which contrast a romantic mythology of smuggling with the brutal reality of a violent trade - not forgetting a spectral encounter with a ghostly revenue officer along the way.
Alastair is a proud Man of Kent, and through Invicta: Lore and Legend of the Garden of England he takes his audience on a journey through his home county (‘The Garden of England’). En route, he tells of how Kent was forever divided by the arrival of the Danes’ in the fifth century, as well tales of lovers, of moonlight, of ghosts, of corrupt clergy and of the many appearances of the Devil in the county.
Alastair has been fascinated with all things Ancient Egyptian since his childhood when he was lucky enough to visit the Tutankhamen exhibition at the British Museum one grey London day. From poetry in praise of the solar disk, to the adventures of the Doomed Prince and the earliest version of Cinderella, Kings, Cobras and Carrion travels the Nile to explore one of the greatest civilisations of the ancient world.
As a gay man, Alastair has often reflected on the way in which men and their relationships, romantic and otherwise, are represented in folk and fairy tales. In From Tinker to Thief, he recasts some familiar (and some not so familiar) tales to examine masculinity, sexuality and power.
