New book published with the aim of educating Wales’ children about their nation’s history

A new book with the aim of educating Wales’ children about their nation’s history will be published in March.

10 Stories from Welsh History That Everyone Should Know picks out the most dramatic events in the last thousand years of Wales’ history in a colourful and attractive way that will appeal to young people of all ages.

Written by former Nation.Cymru editor and Bangor University lecturer Ifan Morgan Jones and illustrated by Telor Gwyn, it is full of pictures, maps and engaging titbits of information.

Author Ifan Morgan Jones said that only including 10 stories meant that he had to make some very tough decisions but that every story also included a second spread full of other information to place it in context.

“There has been some concern that our school children don’t know enough about Welsh history, so this is my contribution to the cause. I actually learnt an awful lot myself about our national history while writing it!” he said.

‘Darker events’

The book looks specifically at the tales of:

• Gwenllian Ferch Gruffudd
• Owain Glyndŵr
• Black Bart the Pirate
• Dic Penderyn and the Merthyr Rising
• The scientist and environmentalist Alfred Russel Wallace
• The Great Penrhyn Strike
• The 1919 Race Riots
• Eileen Beasley’s Welsh language campaign
• The Aberfan disaster
• The coming of Devolution.

“We are living through one of the most interesting periods in Welsh history today where we’ll have to make big decisions about what kind of Wales we’d like to build in the future, which makes it all the more important that we all understand our past,” Ifan Morgan Jones said.

“I tried to give an unsentimental portrayal of Welsh history which was as honest as possible and didn’t patronise children. So there are some heroes from Welsh history in the book but also a lot of darker events that don’t reflect as well on us as a nation, such as slavery and the race riots only a hundred years ago.

“But every nation has shameful things in their past – it’s how we deal with them now that defines who we are as a country.”

The book is published on 5 March and can be ordered here.