Folk music legend loving life in 'iconic' village

"I rent in an iconic village in south east Oxford and I've become part of the community."

Folk music legend Peggy Seeger, 89, is about to hit the road for one last tour of the UK and Ireland with her 25th solo album Teleology.

She said while she misses the stage, she now enjoys walks in Iffley, Oxfordshire, where she has been living since 2013.

After more than 70 years of music-making and activism, Seeger said she "never tried to be famous" but just "do what I do, as good as possible".

"I've had some absolutely wonderful feedback from people and they seem to really know how to listen to it because it's not an easy album," she said of her latest album.

Teleology contains nine new songs and two reinterpretations, one of which is The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face - a timeless love song that folk singer, broadcaster and activist Ewan MacColl wrote for her in 1956.

The pair went on to make more than 40 albums together, marry and have children.

She said: "It's a strange thing because people think that my husband and I both fell disastrously in love with each other, but we didn't.

"I ran away from him for three years, he was not my idea of what I wanted to do with my life."

But despite her resistance and a 20-year age difference, they got together and Seeger said the truth about it was written in her memoir.

"The first kiss I got from him just curled my toes," she said.

• Peggy Seeger on her husband Ewan MacColl
• Peggy Seeger: The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face
• How Folk Songs Should Be Sung

But in a Radio 4 interview, she said she had become "weary" of talking about the past.

After MacColl's death in 1989, she moved back to America where she decided that "really, my true home where I wanted to live until I die, was the UK".

"My children and my grandchildren are here and I know this country better than I know the United States," she said.

"I love this country - all four nations of it."

She said that in Iffley, it was the "first time I've been really part of a community", adding: "I'm now on the village committee and my job is to raise money."

She also continues to be involved in environmental concerns, joining a campaign against building on two green fields.

She has made a film called The Mother, which she said will be shown around Oxford "because it's important to save as much of Oxford's green land that we can".

Seeger said she "loves" walking along the River Thames, going down to the Iffley lock, meeting "some absolutely wonderful friends" and visiting the village shop.

"But I don't get up to much in Oxford because I'm not very fit," she said.

"I love the Christ Church garden but, generally, I will go outside of Oxford because I can't park [in the city], so I'll maybe go out to Waterperry Gardens or drive up to Burford."

Seeger said her upcoming tour "is going to be fabulous".

She said: "Part of it grieves me because there's going to be so many friends there and I won't have time to see them.

"I miss the stage but I'm not physically up to it anymore."

Her message to budding musicians, she said, would be: "Examine your reasons.

"It's almost impossible to make living from it - venues closed down one after the other when Covid hit ... the competition is fierce and you have to really be something different to capture the audience."

Seeger said that when she came to the UK, she had "the right combination of who I was".

"I was female, young, reasonably good-looking," she said. "I was American and I played a longneck banjo and I was greeted by one of the main folklorists in the world.

"I've never tried to be famous, I don't want to be, I just want to do what I do as good as possible."

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