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Dumfries and Galloway's Tony Bonning continues his story in Galloway people
13.01.2023 - 12:29 / dailyrecord.co.uk
Last week we left acclaimed children’s author and storyteller Tony Bonning singing songs and telling tales at Glenlochar playgroup, a chance pastime which was in time to become his vocation.
He and his family had moved from the Lothians to Knockvennie, over the hill from Parton, in 1992, eight years after he bought a piece of land on Screel Hill, which he named Taliesin.
He had founded his own tech company CTT, was a freelance journalist and had worked on ITV’s Oracle teletext service.
But his talent for holding young audiences spellbound soon spread.
“I suppose I began to build a reputation as something of a troubadour,” Tony chuckles as we chat at his Solway-side cottage near Dundrennan. “And before I knew it there were three Tony’s music groups at the CatStrand every month, Castle Douglas every Wednesday and Kirkcudbright on Tuesdays.
“Mums, dads and grans would come along too and at last I knew I had found my forte. But my biggest fans were all three year-olds! The way I survived being autistic was to be a bit crazy and act the goat.
“And I brought that energy into my performances, which the kids loved.”
It’s illuminating to hear Tony reminisce about busy folk nights in Pringle’s at Corsock and the Burnbank in Twynholm before he moved to the comparative bustle of Kirkcudbright in 1997 just as his latest children’s book, Another Fine Mess, was published.
But, he tells me, it was an invitation from the Scottish Book Trust that saw his storytelling career take off.
“They asked me to do a tour of schools in and around Stirling,” he recalls.
“Suddenly you have a Scottish children’s author – of which there were very few in those days – taking tales to the kids in his Readiscovery Bus.
“And it was utterly
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