A BBC Folk Awards Lifetime Achievement Award winner, Carthy has been one of folk music's best-loved, most enthusiastic and most quietly controversial figures for over 40 years. Ground-breaking, innovative guitarist and authoritative interpreter of traditional song, his skill, stage presence and natural charm have won him many admirers from within the folk scene and far beyond it. Guided by an insatiable musical curiosity, Carthy's settings of traditional songs have influenced several generations of artists, including Bob Dylan and Paul Simon, on both sides of the Atlantic.