I would like to thank the 140 or so folk club, concert and festival organizers who graciously booked an unknown Anglo/ Kiwi folk musician from 2007-2012 and continue to enquire whether I will be touring again. 
Also my sincere thanks to the hundreds of folk who came to hear me perform and perhaps bought my CDs - some of whom still write to ask me if I will be back performing in the UK. To all those lovely people the simple answer is no,  I did my dash and what a wonderful experience it was. 
I thoroughly…

THE MIDSHIRE GAZETTE 

23rd December 2017 

STOP PRESS: How Victorian Collectors Plundered English Folk Heritage
English Heritage and English Ethnic Continuity LOST

We were wrong, and we apologise to Ethnic English folk everywhere. 

A hundred years on and the English folk-arts material that was collected by British Victorians has still NOT been fully and properly returned. 

For a hundred years the entire English people have been kept ignorant of its existence, and denied free access to it.

What is ours has…

THE MIDSHIRE GAZETTE 

23rd July 1886 

Victorian Collectors Promise To Save England's Folk Treasures, 
English Heritage and English Ethnic Continuity To Be Preserved Forever 

At first glance it appears that the well-heeled British Victorian collectors of "everything not nailed down" have found a new target for their cultural appropriation, and it is a darned sight closer to home than Egypt or Africa, and doesn't involve an extinct race or ethnic group. 
Down in the English countryside the local yokels have…

Several British private and academic institutions continue to hoard many thousands of folk songs, tunes and dances that rightly belong to the ethnic English people.
These cultural treasures were plundered by British Victorian collectors and hidden away more than a century ago, ostensibly to preserve them for posterity i.e. to prevent them being lost to future generations of the very same English people. However, more than a hundred years later much of this rich cultural folk-heritage has STILL not been…

In researching examples of anti-English racism I am reminded of the mild furore that was created by Steve Knightley's song "Roots" some years ago. The lyrics are below .... see what you think

I still have no idea what persuaded Knightley to appear on the Radio 2 Mike Harding show to explain the lyrics and (presumably) to allay the fears of (folkie?) New British whingers that they were NOT racist, anti-immigrant or anti-multiculturalist and that he (Knightley) is not actually a paid-up member of the BNP.

I…

Hi Phil,
Just bought two of your CDs and can't wait to hear them in full! I've been a folk music enthusiast for many years and found you courtesy of an American Drane who has been spreading word of your music via American genealogy sites!  I'm a descendant of James Anthony Drane who came from England to Maryland in the very early 1600s, so we're cousins many, many times removed!  Now I know where I got my long-time fervent interest in folk music!  It's genetic!  Also appreciate your thoughts on the "New…