Back in 1977, English folksinger Peter Bellamy made a recording called ‘The Transports: A Ballad Opera’ that still makes it into lists of great folk albums of all time; just recently, MoJo magazine went so far as to highlight it as one of the ‘Top 100 Recordings of the 20th Century’. Telling the true story of Henry Cabell and Susannah Holmes, convicts transported to Australia in 1787, it featured such greats as Nic Jones, Dave Swarbrick, June Tabor, Norma Waterson, Martin Carthy and Cyril Tawney – and Bellamy himself, of course.
Sadly, Bellamy took his own life in 1991, but his masterwork has now been reissued in a lavish boxed set that includes not only a CD of the remastered original, but also a second disc containing newly-recorded reinterpretations of the song cycle by the likes of Fairport Convention and Pete Morton, plus a beautifully illustrated 136-page companion book. A must-have folk classic.