"Martin Carthy is one of the unavoidable stopping off points for every English guitarist-singer. For Brian and me his version, and maybe Tony Rose's version of Thorneymoor Woods was inspirational."

Yes, Al, in fact (as I may have told you) the very first song I performed in public was a Carthy-esque version of 'Thorneymoor Woods'. Jim, you're not obliged to like his guitar playing, but I can tell you he's put a lot of thought and work over many years into devising accompaniments to work with the grain of songs learned from unaccompanied source singers, rather than imposing foursquare rhythms on them.

His adaptations of Child ballads have also been very inspirational to me and many others.