Basil Smith: Punch & Judy Professor, Gypsy, Raconteur, Prison Warder, Carver of Puppets and Maker of Wagons.
This brilliant and talented man has told the stories of his past to author Kate Wright.
We follow his life from the village of Eston in Captain Cook's country, where he was born, through his life as a child when he shot his brother. He then leads us through his years in the shipyards as a cabinet-maker, to the time he becomes a Prison Warder. He did this in the hopes of bettering the lot of the Gypsies in prisons to find in the thirteen years he worked in the English prisons only five gypsies incarcerated for a major crime.
His life became more turbulent when he migrated with his wife and young daughters to Australia. After his divorce he wandered as an outcast, before his second marriage and return to the fold. Now living in Tasmania he still makes puppets and wagons and continues to perform regularly.
BIOGRAPHY/PUPPETEERS/ROMANI/AUSTRALIA - SUITABLE ALL AGES
ISBN: 978-0-9802881-1-7
Paperback - 192 pages with portraits and illustrations
