Keith Cullen (born 1968 in Dun Laoghaire, south of Dublin in Ireland), is the founder of Setanta Records, an artist manager and the author of the novel God Save The Village Green.
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He moved to London in 1985, squatting in the Camberwell area, and worked as a bicycle courier before establishing Setanta in 1990: "From my mid teens, running a record label had been my only ambition," he recalls.[1] Albums by The Divine Comedy, Richard Hawley, Edwyn Collins and The Frank and Walters were issued on his label before its decline and Cullen's gradual disenchantment with the music scene in the early 2000s.
At the suggestion of an artist's manager, Cullen enrolled in a creative writing evening course. He self-published his first novel God Save The Village Green in May 2009 under the Setanta banner. In keeping with the Anglo-Irish nature of much of the label's output, the novel narrates the fictional story of a London Irish family in 1960s-'80s Barking, falling apart under various forms of abuse. Cullen described it as "a very grim and gritty book, not mainstream at all," in an interview with The Irish Times.[2]
At present he is working on another novel and a stage play inspired by the music of The Pogues.