After 30 Years as a Tour Guide, Ezekial Bone Tells Us What Robin Hood Means Today

Wandering around Nottingham city centre on a Saturday afternoon, you wouldn’t be hallucinating to see a rugged looking chap with a bow and arrow leading gangs of tourists and locals around through the streets. Guide, raconteur and custodian of legends Ade Andrews has become a familiar face in the city, offering a variety of historical tours and acting as an ambassador for Nottingham throughout the world.

You do have to wonder how a person finds themself in such a unique profession, which was my first question to Ade when we sat down to discuss his career over the last three decades. The answer, it turns out, is through a love of history and a varied patchwork of strange adventures, from performing axe-throwing stunts at Glastonbury festival, to moonlighting as a banquet host at the (now defunct) Sheriff's Lodge and Tales of Robin Hood.

“Essentially, I'm a historian. I was into sword fighting as a kid, I got into Highlander when it came out, started doing Viking reenactments, and then went down to London to study history, specialising in the Civil War,” he explains. Feeling directionless after university, he decided Nottingham was the place for him. “I came across lots of history about the city and thought, what a fantastic place, there's so much interesting information about this concrete jungle - I need to do something with this.”

Fast-forward thirty years and his award-winning Robin Hood Town Tour is one of the highlights for any visitor to the city, providing an immersive two-hour stroll through Nottingham’s rich and rebellious history (before tempting his cohort to the Trip to Jerusalem for a post-tour pint, of course). 

With two other well-crafted local tours under his belt, Ade’s role goes further than merely a pantomime-esque man in tights. As both an actor and historian, he fully embodies each character he adopts, and credits his alter ego of ‘Ezekial Bone’ as a springboard with the scope to explore different eras and stories: “The name came to me in a dream. He is a shape shifting ‘spirit of place’ who takes on different forms through the different tours he does. He steps into different periods of history to bring history to life.”

The first guided walk Ade developed almost twenty years ago, The Guts & Gore tour, is still going strong. “It takes place in the Lace Market and started as me trying to prove that truth is stranger than fiction. It’s about murders, executions, body snatching - all based on historical fact.” For another (not quite so dark) lesson in Nottingham history, his Limelight Tour takes visitors behind the scenes at the Theatre Royal, telling tales of footlights and thespians who have trod the boards there over the past 150 years.

Bringing long gone history to a modern city isn’t necessarily the simplest of tasks, but helping people develop an interest in Nottingham and sense of place is something that is clearly important to Ade - and he believes the Robin Hood legend is still highly relevant, both politically and environmentally. “We need Robin Hood more now than ever,” he says. “Whether he existed or not isn't the important thing - he was born of the people. He's the first superhero dreaming of a better world. And let's face it, we all need a better world right now. Especially with the failure of these world leaders and politicians and jokers. The common people pay the price for their self interest, incompetence and their greed.”

But as someone so immersed in Nottingham’s history, culture and tourism, he is sometimes disappointed by the city’s touristic offering and, in true outlaw style, is vocal about what he sees as the council’s neglect to celebrate the internationally admired rebel. “When the castle relaunched, I thought, Nottingham won’t get this opportunity again. We've got a global brand, and a tourism product that is worth billions, so how could you not be successful with a world famous character?”

As much as Robin Hood is known for stealing from the rich and giving to the poor, the legend is also tied up in the landscape and ecological awareness. Consequently, Ade has been involved in numerous projects aiming to reconnect people with the land, whether it be working as a Heritage Ranger at the Sherwood Forest Trust or resurrecting old customs like May Day celebrations or St George's events. “Folklore is our collective cultural heritage, but in the modern day that relationship is lost, so part of my work as Robin has always been using him as the tool to draw people in,” he explains.

And what of the city in years to come? When asked what his thoughts are on the plans for the wetlands and parks that will be integrated into the Broadmarsh area, he hopes we could be seeing a new, green chapter in the city’s story - if it keeps its ambitious rebel spirit. “Nottingham needs this sort of a bold, audacious plan for the future,” he says. “If they could get that right it could be a leading light of eco urban design for the 21st century, and that would put Nottingham on the European stage. It'd be amazing to bring all the diverse habitats and biodiversity, sort of the green lungs of the city - what a beautiful idea.”

@ezekialbone