Former University of Kent lecturer and presenter of Generation Why, a series all about religion has written a book due to be released in January.
Kristin Hawthorne reports.
Kristin Hawthorne reports.
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00:00I was here for over 20 years, in this office, since 2018.
00:04So every day I'd come from the Gulbenkian, get my coffee, that was my muse,
00:08I'd walk over here and all the writing actually for the nostalgia book
00:13was carried out in this office.
00:16Lecturer, radio host, TV presenter, now a writer.
00:20Chris Deasy may be most known to the viewers at home as the face of Kent's Film Club.
00:25Hello, I'm Chris and welcome to the Kent Film Club.
00:28But behind the scenes he has been working away on his debut piece of work.
00:33But what inspired the KMTV veteran to turn his hand to writing?
00:37I went through a period of really needing to connect with people a few years ago
00:41and I found that in connecting with people it was helping me both with my podcast
00:48and also with the writing of the book.
00:50So everything seemed to be happening at the same time
00:52and Generation Y was the most sublime experience I've ever had
00:55and I, from that of course, ended up doing various other media work
01:00with the wonderful team at KMTV.
01:02In the week that the Queen died we started the process of filming Generation Y
01:09so that took me around the country,
01:11meeting young people, talking about what faith matters to them.
01:14So I was learning from the young people who were talking about their religion
01:18whether it was witchcraft, Judaism, Christianity, Islam.
01:21So I was being educated by the individual practitioners
01:24and their families that we were meeting.
01:26But it was places, as much as people, that inspired his journey with writing,
01:31with Canterbury Campus being at the heart of the work he did.
01:34As you can see around here there are so many books.
01:36This is just the religious studies section
01:38but I'd go to the film section on the floor below us.
01:42I was learning about sociology and anthropology
01:45and obviously effectively taking books out
01:49from authors and on topics that I didn't know very much about.
01:52So I have to be quiet but here in the Templeman Library
01:55is where Chris spent a lot of his time researching and reading more about religion,
02:00helping him to write around 85,000 words of his own,
02:03putting his own spin from the books that surround me now.
02:06Given this book is not necessarily bedtime reading for people here in the county
02:10I asked him what he hoped to achieve with the novel.
02:14So I've written lots of books on religion
02:16but this in a way is the most special one to me
02:18because it's about what matters to real people
02:21rather than just the stories that are told
02:23on the pages of these very erudite and scholarly works.
02:27With the release of the book just around the corner
02:30Chris is looking to the future
02:31just as much as his book draws on his nostalgic past.
02:35Kristen Hawthorne for KMTV in Canterbury.