English folk music has experienced a revival over the past two decades.

Solo artists, such as Seth Lakeman and Eliza Carthy, along with groups such as Bellowhead, have become household names performing a genre of music that previously had been known mainly for unfashionable associations with Morris dancing.

Such a revival can be traced back to the skill and dedication of a select few musicians who have championed English folk and inspired it to become a relevant musical movement in the 21st century, and in that group is included multi- instrumentalist and composer Chris Woods.

Chris, who is to play the Peel Centenary Centre at the end of November, is one of the most influential people in English traditional movement, along with other luminary figures, such as Martin Carthy and Martin Simpson.

The guitarist, singer, fiddle and viola-player is a four-time BBC Folk Award winner, once in 2006 for Best Original Song category for "One in a Million", a modern retelling of a widespread traditional tale which was set in a fish and chip shop, in which a lost ring is rediscovered in the stomach of a fish.

He was named as ’Folk Singer of the Year’ twice in 2009 and 2011, and also won ’Song of the Year’ for ’Hollow Point’, a moving portrait of the shooting of Jean Charles De Menezes.

As well as a solo artist in his own right, he has been a member of many well-known and highly-regarded duos, groups and collectives, such as ’Wood and Cutting’, alongside accordionist Andy Cutting, who were labelled ’at the forefront of the latest wave of British music acts’ by Q magazine in 1995.

Chris was also a prominent and constant member of the ’Imagined Village’ project, which fused folk and Indian music with modern day stories, and who also featured Billy Bragg, Paul weller, Eliza Carthy and the dohl drummer Johny Kalsi.

To date, he has released or appeared on 21 albums, including his latest solo offering, ’So Much To Defend’, released in 2016.

Chris appears in Peel on Saturday, November 25, from 8pm.

Tickets are £12, available fromShakti Mann, Peter Norris Music, Celtic Gold, Thompson Travel in Port Erin and also online from etickets.im/cc