Welcome — and thanks for stopping by
I’m a writer and songwriter with a foot in several creative worlds,
and this site gathers together the songs, videos, and books that have
emerged along the way. I hope you find something of interest!
Where Poetry Meets Music
Alongside writing my own songs, I’ve long been drawn
to giving classic poetry a musical life. The Romantic poets
— Keats, Shelley, and Byron — have always fascinated me,
and across the site you’ll find folk‑rock settings of their words.
The flagship album The First Fab Four brings their voices together
in a whirlwind tour of Romantic lyrics: from the charm of
“Jenny Kissed Me”, through highlights from Keats, Shelley, and Byron,
to the wistful farewell of “So, We’ll Go No More a Roving”.
You may shed a tear — but you may also feel unexpectedly uplifted.
Romantics fire and Beatles brilliance
More recently, I’ve brought them into conversation
with another seismic cultural force: The Beatles.
In The Closest Thing in History, I place the poets
side by side with the band, tracing the surprising ways
their creative paths and cultural impact intersect.
So the Romantics trade sparks with The Beatles,
and the book ultimately suggests that the band’s
extraordinary career gives fresh life to the Romantics’
energising belief in the imagination as a transformative force.
Albums, EPs, and Videos
If you’d like to delve deeper, you’ll find:
a Lord Byron EP,
a full Shelley album,
a Keats single,
and a Videos page offering brief lives of the poets.
One of these, on the life and work of Shelley,
was narrated by the late Benjamin Zephaniah,
a great admirer of the Romantics. He also tells the story
of Byron’s final journey to Greece in support of the
Greek War of Independence. Stories, hopefully,
to fan the flames of imagination and creativity.
Poetry Books
You’ll also find details of two books of my own poetry:
The Rime of the Asian Highway, a verse narrative of
a 1970s overland journey to India — a first encounter with Asia,
full of colour, atmosphere, and discovery.
The Rough, the Smooth and the Quirky, a collection
rooted in the many‑faceted present and shaped by the rhythms
of English balladry — poems with heart, reflection,
mischief, insight and vision.
And not forgetting,
an album for our times...
Fragments of reality in song,
aiming for the positive
So happy wandering — and feel free
to send any thoughts or feedback to me
at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.