Sarah Tanburn Catrin Kean has given us a delightful, timely novel. The jacket tells us it is the story of her great-grandparents who married in 1878. That is a small teaser for the tale of Ellen, the hard-working Tiger Bay girl, and her husband, Samuel. We meet Ellen at the […]
Jon Gower Cast as a novel about the secrets and history of female power, this is a long and languorous read which captures you quietly but surely. It’s neither a book crammed full of incident, nor does it have a sprawling cast of characters to animate its 350 pages but […]
Jon Gower A massive book about a monumental figure in Welsh literature, this biography of T. Gwynn Jones is also a corrective, reminding us that his highly regarded and popular poetry was only a small part of his voluminous output. Throughout an exhaustingly hard-working life, Jones generated reams and reams […]
Sara Louise Wheeler Last week, the spotlight fell on the ten poems Welsh literature GCSE students are currently required to study – or rather the poets who wrote them. In a Twitter thread, Welsh poet Iestyn Tyne drew attention to the fact that the demographic lacked diversity, particularly emphasising that […]
Crystal Jeans In preparing for the writing of a review, what I normally do is go through the book in question and underline any bit that jumps out at me, writing things in the margins like, ‘Ooh, lovely bit of description’, or, ‘Emotive. Nice’. Well, my copy of The Murenger […]
*English follows below* Mari Emlyn Ar ddiwedd diwrnod olaf Ysgol Capel Celyn, gofynnodd Martha Roberts, y brifathrawes, i’r disgyblion osod eu cadeiriau’n dwt o dan y desgiau am y tro diwethaf ac i gerdded allan o’r ysgol yn barchus. A dyna wnaed. Cyn i’r plant gyrraedd gwaelod y lôn, roedd […]
Sarah Tanburn David Alfred Thomas, known as DA, became that colossus of imperial coal, Viscount Rhondda. He started with money, for sure, but became wealthy beyond dreams. His story is inextricably bound up with the drama of South Wales and the black gold powering Britain’s nineteenth century expansion. In ‘The […]
Jon Gower Tributes have been paid to Siôn Eirian, the gifted poet, playwright, novelist and screenwriter who passed away this week at the age of 66. Brought up in Flintshire, he attended primary and secondary school in Mold before studying drama and Welsh at Aberystwyth University. Subsequently, he attended what […]
Jon Gower If there was going to be anyone who could find a way of creating a piece of site-specific theatre during lockdown or ‘y clo mawr’ it was Eddie Ladd. This extraordinary performer has long married energetic, curiosity-charged physical dance with technology and ‘Fy Ynys Las’, my green […]
Jon Gower Some writers write about the places where they live or know to the extent they become synonymous with them, be it James Joyce and Dublin, Kate Roberts and the north Wales slatelands, Proust’s Paris or Gwyn Thomas and what he described as the ‘riven gulches’ of the south […]
