Friday 25th July 2025 @ 19.30

'When the Gentlemen Go By'

Alastair K. Daniel

 

For periods of the seventeenth and 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. In this set of smuggling tales and ballads, opening with words sung from Kipling’s poem 'When the Gentlemen Go By', Alastair contrasts the romantic mythology of smuggling with the brutal reality of a violent trade - and there's a spectral encounter with a ghostly revenue officer along the way.