Redonda: The Island with Too Many Kings
BBC Radio 4, 22 May 2007, 11:30am – 12:00.
Written by Roger Dobson and Angus Deayton
Angus Deayton presents the remarkable tale of Redonda, an uninhabited rock in the Caribbean annexed by the British in the 1870s and now laid claim to by as many as nine competing Kings from the eccentric circles of Bohemian England.
1947 saw the coronation of poet John Gawsworth as King Juan I, who created his own Redondan peerage including Dylan Thomas, Vincent Price, Lawrence and Gerald Durrell, Joan Greenwood, J. B. Priestley, Dirk Bogarde and countless others whose titles were often exchanged for credit at the local pub.
The programme evokes the strange history of an imaginary kingdom set on a real island, and includes contributions from A.S. Byatt, Fay Weldon, Arthur Freeman, Oliver Cox and Brian Stableford. There will also be interviews with kings past and present, including Jon Wynne-Tyson and King Robert the Bald.