Bygone Kent is a collection of twenty-two essays about the people and events that have largely been neglected by historians but are part of Kent's rich tapestry featuring the eccentric, bizarre and outrageous people who have lived and passed through the garden of England. This book concentrates on the strange tales surrounding these extraordinary people and events. Who would have thought that the cradle of British aviation was the on the unfashionable Isle of Sheppey; or that the greatest technological change in printing happened in the small town of Westerham in 1965; that the first and only recognised American Princess, Pocahontas, was buried in Gravesend in 1617; and that perhaps the greatest invention ever, the transmission of electricity, took place at Otterden, Charing; or that the composer of the first English sonnet was not Shakespeare but Sir Thomas Wyatt of Allington Castle, Maidstone, soldier, courtier, poet and Anne Boleyn's lover. Read on and discover Kent's best-kept secrets.

Malcolm Horton is an author, printer and publisher who lives at the foot of the North Downs. He has written 20 historical essays for Bygone Kent, This England and Kent Life magazine and is still a regular contributor to Bygone Kent. His publishing business commissioned artists, who were members of the Royal Academy and Royal Watercolours Society, to produce definitive watercolours of the colleges of Oxford and Cambridge University and leading independent schools, from which they made limited edition prints and seven coffee table books, which had an accompanying text outlining the history of the colleges/schools. He was a borough councillor in Bexley for four years, and now focusses his research and writing on his native Kent.