Peter Carpenter

for The Tennant Lecture Series

Bowieland: Walking in the Footsteps of David Bowie

Wednesday 2 December 2026

Lecture in the EM Forster Theatre at 8pm

Drinks in the Theatre Foyer from 7.15pm

Following open heart surgery, Peter Carpenter was given one instruction: walk, if you want to stay alive. So when his hero died in 2016 he knew exactly what he had to do. The figure who was to so many a companion and guide had left no single focal point for homage. To reconnect with him, Peter took a walk into the past, to the places where David Jones became something else: David Bowie. 

Leaving behind well-known shrines to Bowie, he journeyed through South London edgelands to obscurer haunts. His quest, a series of happy accidents and chance meetings, took him to Bickley as well as Berlin and Brixton, to Tunbridge Wells as well as Beckenham and Eel Pie Island. These perambulations echoed Bowie's own wandering creative spirit and revealed multiple influences and connections that shaped Bowie's creative development. 

Peter's book is simultaneously a celebration of the revelatory and healing powers of walking, and by no means just for Bowie fans. Bowieland has been acclaimed as a 'brilliant book...the very best memorial to Bowie' (Paul Ross: Talksport Book of the Week). Alex Larman in the Observer said that 'it will make you want to take your very own pilgrimage'. 

Peter is the author of eight collections of poetry and a range of essays and articles, from T.S Eliot's poetry to the work of Ukrainian photographer, Boris Mikhailov. He taught at Tonbridge for 29 years, as Head of English, Director of Teaching and Learning, and throughout as a coach of cricket, football and rugby. 

This event is fully accessible.