Roussillon has a millennium-long history of troubadours, jongleurs and minstrels, a tradition that spans the Pyrenees, from west to east and north to south, in Catalan, Occitan and all variations in between. Musicians, poets, actors, performers and storytellers of all kinds have walked the paths of our beautiful region, from village to village, telling their stories, bringing news and delighting people with their poetry, songs and instruments.
Today, 1,000 years on, in 2026, in the Vallespir, and Céret to be specific, those links are alive and well in the guise of a modern-day English troubadour, Mike Harding. Mike has been a familiar face on stage and TV in the United Kingdom for many years, and is becoming so in his adopted home here in Céret, beneath its famous plane trees and in its café life. Mike is many things: a musician, well known for his mandolin playing and immense repertoire of folk music, but also a writer, poet, actor, dramatist and filmmaker. A polymath in many respects, he is also a font of deep knowledge, particularly about the north of England, where he was born and bred and where he returns when he is not in Céret.
In Céret, Mike has become even more prolific as a writer at this stage of his long career, rising at dawn and working on a series of six books. The stories are gathered and recounted from his early childhood days in Manchester, his Irish roots and his travels around the globe, as a keen walker and explorer of the road less travelled. Every story is lovingly crafted from a wealth of anecdotes and observations of the often hard lives of ordinary people, wherever they are in the world, dealing with the same things: love, betrayal, the absurdities of daily life, loss and death, and the unique contributions of everyman and everywoman to our collective history.
All human life is found in these joyfully told stories. Indeed, although committed to paper, this is storytelling in the oldest of oral traditions, just like those troubadours before him. Every story is, in its own way, a song, a poem or news from far-off places, filled with laugh-out-loud moments, tears of sadness and empathy, and anger at the injustice and unfairness of an often arbitrary and cruel world.
Mike’s first two books, Specky Four Eyes and As the Sky With Stars, are on sale at the Cheval Dans l’Arbre bookshop in Céret, and his third and latest addition to the series, Jockey – A Book of Irish Tales, has just been published and is now available to buy there too. All are priced at €12 each, and Mike is donating all proceeds to the bookshop’s association, for children’s books, projects and activities. Three more are in the pipeline.
The Cheval Dans l’Arbre is a community cooperative and a well-loved institution in Céret. It has recently started to offer an English-language book section and an ordering service, with no hidden extra import fees compared to online ordering.
Outside the UK, Mike’s books are exclusively on The Cheval’s shelves, and he will be holding a storytelling session there on Wednesday 30th September at 18:00, reading from and signing his latest book, Jockey, a series of short stories drawing on his strong Irish family roots and personal connections with Ireland.
Troubadours, ancient and modern, are a dwindling band, and this is one event not to be missed!