The most comprehensive study of Wales’ maritime history ever commissioned, taking over a decade to research and produce, sees publication this week. Entitled Wales and the Sea: 10,000 years of Welsh Maritime History, the volume delves into every aspect of Wales’ connection with the sea, from earliest history to the present day: from archaeology […]
Jon Gower Like a rage-filled bulletin from the edges of broken Britain, Niall Griffiths’ eighth novel takes us back to where his writing journey began, to the streets of Aberystwyth and its magic-mushroomed, mystical hinterland, where ‘little bombs of bilberries nod in the grasses’ and ‘yarrow galaxies slowly help to […]
Jon Gower It’s hard to imagine how so much stuff could happen up the Heads of the Valleys in a couple of days, what with the dog-nappings and stick-ups and decapitations. Which all help explain the hyper-oxygenated lick at which Aled Smith’a prose races along in this tale of sink […]
Emily Garside American Nightmare is the first in the Autumn season of The Other Room – Cardiff’s first pub theatre. In a new twist, Dan Jones has curated a season of interlinked new plays in the form of ‘The Violence Series’. American Nightmare by Matthew Bulgo will be followed by […]
Jon Gower This part of Wales is studded with cairns and burial chambers, rugged scenery and mystical sites where the partition between this world and another are pretty thin. But it is also one of gigantic oil tankers, youth unemployment and save-our-hospital campaigns. It seems natural therefore that author John […]
A festival aimed at teaching Wales’ children about the nation’s history will launch tomorrow at heritage sites all over the country. Over 100 shows will be held at heritage sites from St Fagans National Museum of History to Nefyn Maritime Museum, and from Pontcysyllte to Strata Florida. 20,000 children will […]
The doors of the home of one of Wales’s greatest heroes will be thrown open to the public as Owain Glyndŵr gets the Through The Keyhole treatment in Corwen this month. The miracle of modern technology will give visitors to the inaugural two-day Gwyl y Fflam – Festival of Flame […]
Ifan Morgan Jones It amazes me that there are so few original fantasy works available in Welsh, the language that produced the Mabinogi – tales that have inspired The Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, Game of the Thrones and, it seems, countless massive multiplayer online games in English, Korean […]
Dawn Thomson Thunk, thunk, thud. Debs brought the mallet down hard, again and again. She couldn’t stop once she started. Blood spattered across the melamine worktop polka-dotting the magnolia walls of the new kitchen extension. Jaws clenched, eyes staring, her malice was fully focussed. Damn Norman. Beaten, limp and lifeless, […]
Nation.Cymru theatre critic Emily Garside’s play Don’t Send Flowers opens this week in Cardiff. Here she reflects on the process of getting it to the stage. Emily Garside It began, as with much of my life with books. I could tell you the exact corner of the exact bookshop in […]
