I was lucky enough to be introduced to medieval Welsh literature when I was an undergraduate, and the Welsh language mesmerised me. It is so unlike any other language that I had come across and translating texts from Welsh into English was as absorbing as code-cracking. My apprenticeship as a scholar was long and hard and I soon realised that my particular contribution was to make Welsh literature accessible to non-Welsh speakers, not simply through translations, but by aligning the Welsh tradition with the wider literary cultures of Europe. I want Wales and its two literatures to take their place as two of the great literatures of Europe.
I’m not particularly a foodie, but this book was an eye-opener.
Carwyn Graves takes us on a historical and topographical journey around Wales uncovering one of its best-kept secrets, its traditional and inventive cuisine. I discovered that there is definitely more to Welsh cooking than the famous Welsh rarebit or even the ubiquitous Welsh cakes (enjoyable though they are).
The book is structured around key foods from the Welsh menu, including Bara/Bread, Caws/Cheese, and Cig Oen/Lamb. The emphasis is on fresh natural foods, though the final chapter on Sglodion/Chips rather gives the game away.
Welsh Food Stories explores more than two thousand years of history to discover the rich but forgotten heritage of Welsh foods - from oysters to cider, salted butter to salt-marsh lamb. Despite centuries of industry, ancient traditions have survived in pockets across the country among farmers, bakers, fisherfolk, brewers and growers who are taking Welsh food back to its roots, and trailblazing truly sustainable foods as they do so.
In this important book, author Carwyn Graves travels Wales to uncover the country's traditional foods and meet the people making them today. There are the owners of a local Carmarthenshire chip…
One of my favourite reviews described my book as ‘a bloodstained version of the world of Barbara Pym.’ Perfect! I write crime novels set in the Church of England. I also read mysteries with churchy connections—lots of them. My shelves hold hundreds, featuring clerical sleuths (and even a few clerical murderers), books set in churches, cathedrals, and monasteries (past and present). I love to explore the questions I am so often asked when talking about the books I love: why is there such a plethora of them, and why does the Church, which represents ‘goodness,’ appear so often in novels which feature unspeakable crimes?
Set in the evocative, spooky borderlands known as the Marches, between England and Wales, this is part of a series by Phil Rickman. Through the novels we follow the trials and tribulations of Merrily Watkins, a parish priest and the official exorcist for the Hereford diocese of the Church of England—thus introducing a strong element of the supernatural. Merrily is a believable and sympathetic protagonist, with her share of human weaknesses, and she’s surrounded by a rich, unforgettable cast of ongoing supporting characters: daughter Jane, musician Lol, and the wonderful Gomer Parry. It was difficult to choose one book from this fine series, but I settled on this one because it features one of my own favourite churches—Kilpeck, in the wilds of Herefordshire.
When Aidan Lloyd's bleak funeral is followed by a nocturnal ritual in the fog, it becomes all too clear that Aidan, son of a wealthy farmer, will not be resting in peace.
Aidan's hidden history has reignited an old feud, and a rural tradition begins to display its sinister side.
It's already a fraught time for Merrily Watkins, her future threatened by a bishop committed to restricting her role as diocesan exorcist for Hereford. Suddenly there are events she can't talk about as she and her daughter Jane find themselves potentially on the wrong side of the law.
I’m a historian of medieval Europe who specializes in twelfth-century England and France. I’ve been fascinated with history since childhood and distinctly remember being obsessed with a book on English monarchs in my mom’s bookcase when I was young. In college, I took a class on Medieval England with a professor whose enthusiasm for the subject, along with the sheer strangeness of the medieval world, hooked me. I’ve been exploring medieval Europe ever since, and deepening my understanding of how our own world came into being in the process.
Any book by Robert Bartlett is worth reading (check out The Hanged Man and Trial by Fire and Water as well), but I love this one because it examines one of the most interesting and entertaining historians of the twelfth century, Gerald of Wales.
Gerald was famously opinionated, prejudiced (mainly against the Irish – check out his History of Ireland), and gossipy. Bartlett explores Gerald’s attitudes, experiences, and works to paint a compelling picture of the wider world around him. Much like Chibnall’s book on Orderic, this is a fascinating portrait of an important historian and the complicated world he lived in.
I am the Director of the High Pay Centre, a London-based think tank researching the causes and consequences of economic inequality. In most major economies, the richest 1% of the population now take up to a fifth of all income and something like a quarter to a third of all wealth. These rich jerks aren’t necessarily bad people, at least not in all cases, and we don’t literally need to eat them all. However, such extreme concentration of income and wealth is undeserved and unnecessary, and it should definitely be an overriding priority to share it in a fairer and more even way.
After the UK Miners’ Strike was defeated in 1984, the coal mining industry across the country gradually shut down. At the Tower Colliery in South Wales, however, Miners led by Union official Tyrone O’Sullivan used their redundancy cheques to buy the mine and run it as a co-operative until the coal ran out.
It’s an incredible tale of the spirit and ingenuity that exist but are too rarely nurtured in post-industrial communities and of how badly so many mining towns in Britain were let down by so-called free market economics.
Tyronne O'Sullivan is the chairman of Tower Colliery, Hirwaun, South Wales. He led the team of miners that fought to buy the pit from British Coal in 1995. He and 238 miners each paid 8,000 from their own redundancy settlement to become shareholders and borrowed a further GBP2 million. This was, and still is, a unique achievement - no other mine, in the history of British Coal, has been bought by the workforce. For over 20 years Tyronne was the National Union of mineworkers branch secretary, leading a radical group of men in what had to be a militant colliery.…
As a child, I was captivated by Christmas's traditions, rituals, meaning, and magic, which always signaled a time for introspection and hope. These books capture all of that. For me, the holiday is a time to pause and reflect, and revisiting these works helps remind me of what is important in life and where we should be pointed, where our humanity lies.
Dylan Thomas’s compressed and lyrical account of a young lad’s Christmas has always enchanted me, and it continues every time I read it or hear it read. I recommend listening to the author reading it, available on YouTube. It is delightful poetic prose, moving, amusing, and always surprising. I envy his style here and his wit, feeling, and language proficiency. I wish I could write like that.
Dylan Thomas's classic account of his childhood Christmases, with full colour illustrations by Peter Bailey. The special gift edition for Thomas's centenary now in paperback, with a beautiful gold-foiled cover.
All the Christmases roll down toward the two-tongued sea, like a cold and headlong moon bundling down the sky that was our street...
Dylan Thomas's lyrical account of his childhood Christmases in a small Welsh town, featuring wolves, bears, hippos and Mrs Prothero's cat, has become deservedly famous. This re-designed edition celebrates the centenary of his birth, and features full colour artwork from illustrator Peter Bailey.
I am a long-time lover of mysteries. Whether it be books, TV, or movies, I love when there is an unknown element to puzzle out. I remember staying up long past my bedtime as a child, reading because I just had to know what happened. I write across a number of genres for different age groups, but at the heart of every story I take on is a mystery that I want to figure out for myself. I love it when readers and audiences come along for the ride, joining me for the plot twists and turns.
I love a good slow reveal of backstory in a mystery. Pair that with a tense, high-stakes present-day mystery, and I cannot put the book down. The backstory in this book is complex, and the perfect number of hints were given throughout to keep me wanting to know more.
I also loved that the author had chosen a young (perhaps unreliable) narrator, which made seeing the story through her eyes all the more compelling. There were times when it felt like I understood more of what was happening than the character did, and I wanted to do the classic horror-movie-watching moment of yelling at the characters to get away. A great read that I thought about for a long time afterwards.
A girl called Gracie. A town called Coongahoola - on the dark foreboding Bagooli River. Every small town has its secrets: good, bad, funny, sad - and sometimes terrifying. They're mythologised and whispered-about by town gossips and other grown-ups until something happens to snap the past into focus. And something always happens. Things get weird in Coongahoola when 'a sighting' of the Virgin Mary attracts hundreds of 'Believers', who set up camp on the river bank and try to win local souls. Things get scary in Coongahoola when the River Children - born nine months after the town's infamous River…
I came to the Arthurian legends through the medium of medieval Welsh literature, a subject that had intrigued and challenged me since I was an undergraduate. I found the language impenetrable and yet beautiful, while the literature it encoded was fascinatingly unlike the literary traditions of England and France. I wanted to connect with a version of Arthur that preceded the romance traditions of France and England and bears witness to a much older culture and social organisation. Though I've learned to love other versions of Arthur, and indeed I teach the Arthurian legends as part of my academic work, the stark drama of the Welsh poems and tales continues to intrigue me.
For any serious Arthurian fan, an understanding of the Welsh origins of Arthur is essential, and yet unpicking these early threads of Arthurian material can be difficult.
This book provides the perfect guide, a series of accessible articles about the various stories and poems that circulated in Wales before the fourteenth century. As someone who has studied medieval Welsh literature in depth, I enjoy sharing knowledge of this fascinating culture with others, and this book opens a door into the world of early Wales where Arthur first took shape as a legendary battle warrior.
Arthur’s Welsh origins have perhaps attracted more extremist views than any other part of the legends, so this book, based on documentary evidence, is a welcome corrective to the more far-fetched speculations about the origins of Arthur.
Little, if anything, is known historically of Arthur, yet for centuries the romances of Arthur and his court dominated the imaginative literature of Europe in many languages. The roots of this vast flowering of the Arthurian legend are to be found in early Welsh tradition, and this volume gives an account of the Arthurian literature produced in Wales, in both Welsh and Latin, during the Middle Ages.
The distinguished contributors offer a comprehensive view of recent scholarship relating to Arthurian literature in early Welsh and other Brythonic sources. The volume includes chapters on the 'historical' Arthur, Arthur in early Welsh…
I’m a lecturer in history at the University of Hertfordshire where I teach early modern history of medicine and the body. I have published on reproductive history in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. The history of medicine is endlessly diverse, and there are so many books on early modern medicine, some broad and others more specific, it’s this variety that I find endlessly intriguing. Some conditions from the era, like gout and cancer, are familiar, while others like, greensickness, aren’t recognized any longer. Thinking about these differences and about how people’s bodies ached and suffered helps me to appreciate their relationships, struggles, and triumphs in a whole new dimension.
So many history books about medicine in the early modern period focus on London and other English urban centers. Withey’s book allows readers to move beyond the metropolis and glimpse sickness, disease, and medicine in a largely rural setting. It challenges readers to move beyond the concept that rural medicine was dominated by folklore and magic, Wales was not insular or remote but connected to broader medical trends in both Britain and Europe. This book illuminates how the ‘Welsh’ body was perceived: strong, robust, possessed of a hot choleric temperament, and a fondness for toasted cheese. And paints a clear picture of the men who made their living treating these bodies.
Physick and the family offers new insights into the early modern sickness experience, through a study of the medical history of Wales.
Newly available in paperback, this first ever monograph of early modern Welsh medicine utilises a large body of newly discovered source material. Using numerous approaches and methodologies, it makes a significant contribution to debates in medical history, including economies of knowledge, domestic medicine and care, material culture and the rural medical marketplace. Drawing on sources from probates to parish records, diaries to domestic remedy collections, Withey offers new directions for recovering the often obscure medical worldview of the…
Although I have never been faced with an unwanted pregnancy, I lived through an era when women did not have easy choices available to them. Abortions were illegal while there was also tremendous stigma attached to those who choose to give their babies up for adoption or even decided to raise their babies without a male involved. Many times, the family of origin refused to support these women, turning their back on them. Most often, the men were not held accountable and disappeared with no further responsibilities.
This series deeply involves an Irish family during World War II. A young woman finds herself in love with the town gentry but when she discovers she is pregnant, the young man’s father convinces him that she is a whore, a loose woman, and not solely in love with him. She goes to a family friend’s home in Wales to have the baby and finds herself in love with the son of the family, a Jewish doctor who immigrates to her home and serves as the town doctor. There are many complications and prejudices to overcome in this moving tale.
For each member of the O’Sullivan family there are turbulent times ahead.
Eli’s need to do his best for his patients is a cause for a bitter divide in the community. Emmet seems hell bent on going down a path in life his parents dread but they’re unable to stop him. Jack’s life and liberty are in grave peril as his secret faces exposure, while Emily’s troubles are, it seems only just beginning with the return of someone she would much rather had disappeared forever. And Maria must decide, is blood really thicker than water, and…
The perfect title reflects how
imperfect life can be, so just accept it!
Is it a memoir or a cookery book? The
recipes are there to add to the background story, as we know how popular cookery
books are when we empathize with the person behind them. In this case, Anita’s
view that food is the basis of making and keeping friends shines through.
Anita’s story is of a professional,
mature Canadian relocating to rural Wales, with anecdotes about people and how they
interact when spread widely across a rural area. Anyone from this county (including
me) will instantly recognize characters and places!
It is a large, sturdy
coffee-table book to dip into with lots of full-color photographs and seasonal
recipes for entertaining friends, a nice, easy read.
