Carl Gent: The Balls of Alban

“St. Alban and I were playing strip poker but neither of us had any cards. We both sat there, balls out. Me, because I was losing. Him, well he just turned up like that…”

Gripping and singularly anachronistic, ‘The Balls of Alban’ continues Carl Gent’s ludic project to rehistoricise and refictionalise the sidelined figure of Cynethryth, eighth century Queen of Mercia. Part riotous short story, part historical survey, Gent’s work is a subversive excavation of how we tell stories and the Anglo-Saxon imaginary.