Local Author Stevyn Colgan On Cornish Identity & His Elvish Friends...

Stevyn Colgan - Author Of 'Joined-Up Thinking' (see review) and Cornish Lad done good, talks to Falmouth People about his life and memories of the Duchy.

Stevyn is a Cornishman, make no mistake about that. After thirty years away he still calls it home, and has lived all over – Launceston, Blackwater, Penzance and then Helston, the place he cites as his home town and whose school clearly left a lasting impression.

“My careers teacher was Howard Curnow, now a respected bard of the Cornish Gorsedd and a wonderful storyteller. My chemistry teacher was Richard Jenkins who went on to become Grand Bard. And my French teacher was Richard Gendall, one of the world’s leading authorities on the Cornish language and a damned fine folkie who wrote and performed with people like Brenda Wootton.”

Stevyn was artistic and creative, a path that the school had encouraged him in, so he surprised his teachers by leaving school at 18 to become a copper, like his dad, to win a £50 bet with the elder Colgan.

“He was a shrewdy, my dad. He worried that this chubby, hirsute, arty-farty layabout with the attempted beard and no commonsense would just end up as a dole monkey for life. By tricking me into a career, he did me a huge favour. And he paid up. Eventually.”

After three decades with the Metropolitan Police in London Stevyn is finally hanging up his truncheon. In that time he’s been petrol-bombed, shot at, stabbed and beaten up.

He says; “I’ve seen more dead and horribly injured people than I care to remember. But there have been some bad times too. I once had to stand through an entire Simply Red gig at Wembley.”

Meeting two US Presidents, three Prime Ministers, a Pope, countless celebrities and most of the Royal Family, even getting a peck on the cheek from Princess Diana. A part of Live Aid, therefore a part of history, mingling people like Douglas Adams, Freddie Mercury and Kenny Everett, all now sadly no longer with us, Stevyn has had an incredible few decades and one wonders how to follow experiences like those?

It wasn’t all like that of course. On the side he continued to pursue his creative interests, writing, painting, drawing, sculpting and music. Stevyn sums it up thus;

“I have written over 100 not very good songs. I’ve done illustration work for books and magazines, for charities like the NSPCC and Plain English Campaign, and I was the official artist for the Autumn 2006 national children’s book fair. If you saw a banner covered in pirates hanging from your local school around September three years ago, I painted it… I did some sculpting on films like The Fifth Element and can boast that the 32nd tail vertebra of the London Natural History Museum’s Diplodocus skeleton was made with these fair hands.”

Approaching his twenty-fifth year as a cop, he decided it was time to give the artist within him a chance to go pro. It’s been five years, and let’s just say it’s going fairly smoothly for the Helstonian lad. Stevyn’s first book ‘Joined-Up Thinking’, was published by Pan Macmillan in 2008 (see review) and he is currently working on the second. Other fantastic achievements have been his involvement with “the wonderful group of people who make the BBC’s QI series”, writing and illustrating features for the last two QI Annuals, and Stephen Fry provided the cover quote for  ‘Joined-Up Thinking’.

“Stephen has also written a nice quote for the cover of my Cornish faerie tales book. It’s being published this year by the Cornish Language Fellowship (Kowethas an Yeth Kernewek) in both English and Cornish languages and will be used to teach the language in schools. As I understand it, there are very few new books published in Cornish; most are translations of existing works. My stories are brand new retellings of classic Cornish tales like Tregeagle and the Giant of St Michael’s Mount. I’ve kept the traditional characters and stories but given them a little 21st century kick to make them more accessible for a modern child audience. That was what attracted Kowethas in the first place. I’ve been on a mission to get these stories back into the heads of Cornish kids for some 10 years now. Sadly, most collections of Cornish folk tales are stuffy and old-fashioned…I even unearthed some surprising things, including the fact that ‘The three little pigs’ may have originally been ‘The three little Pigsies (Piskies)’. And why not? Who ever heard of a pig living in a house?”

 

Stevyn has also illustrated the new book – you can get a sneak preview above! It’s great to know that his love for his home hasn’t diminished over the years, absence makes the heart grow fonder, as they say. By his own admission he stays near London for work, but is planning a return dreckly…

“I miss the rain and the moors and the granite. I long for the smell of the sea and that glorious quality of light…”

You can find out more about Stevyn on his website, read his blog, or follow him on Twitter where his username is @stevyncolgan