Books Bard of Ely is featured in

Peter Finch, who is a well-known poet, who came to fame in the late sixties and has many volumes of poetry to his name, as well as being a writer and literary critic, featured me as his guide to the Ely council estate in Cardiff in his book Real Cardiff (Seren).

Peter looks behind the public image aimed at tourists to meet with the real people and characters of the city and visit the places that perhaps get left out of the news and general publicity for Cardiff. He goes out and has a look at the parts of the city that tourists don't get to hear about. He looks at what makes up the Real Cardiff.

So successful was this book that it has led on to a whole series in a similar vein in which Peter investigates behind the scenes of Cardiff and comes up with a very different world to the one presented by the tourist industry. And this in no way spoils the image of the city but rather adds to its considerable character.

Lionel Fanthorpe and his wife, co-author and agent Patricia, included a chapter about me in their The World's Most Mysterious People, which was part of a series of books published by Hounslow. Lionel is probably most famous for his past role of being the presenter for the popular Fortean TV television series.

I had been regarded as eccentric for a long time but with the publication of this book I got the literary stamp of "mysterious" too!