RAYMOND WILLIAMS was the most influentialsocialist writer and thinker in post-war Britain. Now, making full use of Williams's private and unpublishedpapers and by placing him in a wide social and culturallandscape, Dai Smith uncovers how Williams's life to 1961 is an explanationof his immense intellectual achievement.
In every atlas there is a country missing from the maps of South America: the Andean nation.For five months John Harrison journeys through this secret country, walking alone into remote villages where he is the first gringo the inhabitants have ever seen, and where life continues as if Columbus had never sailed. He lives at over 10,000 feet for most of the trip, following the great road of the Incas: the Camino Real, or Royal Road. Hand built over 500 years ago, it crosses the most difficult and dangerous mountains in all the Americas, diving into sweltering canyons and soaring up into the snows. 1500 miles, half of it on foot, takes him from the Equator to Cuzco and the most magical city of all: Machu Picchu. He is attacked, gets lost and is trapped by floods, but only when he goes home does he lose what he wants most.
John Harrison's Forgotten Footprints is the untold story of the sailors, sealers and eccentrics who discovered thelast continent: Antarctica. A thrilling record of lost triumph and tragedy, a saga of adventure and ambition against all odds, and a compelling insight into extraordinary personalities and the times that shaped them.
We all have our favourite demons. A desperate Romeo circles thebushes below Juliet's balcony, hoping for a glimpse of her barebody. Adamant of his own sanity, Hamlet chatters away to his oldest friend, the skullgrinning in his palm. Andromache screams for her only child,'spiralling like sycamore' from the walls of Troy.
Kisses Sweeter Than Wine is a brutally honest and completely absorbing literary memoir from a man who has emerged as one of Wales's major cultural figures. Boyd Clack is a man of many talents: a writer, actor, singer, musician, enthusiast and with this first book picks apart a challenging upbringing in Tonyrefail, his wanderings to Australia, Amsterdam and London, his experimentation as a young man with drink and drugs and love. This is Boyd's story, told with an honesty and perception and skill that will absorb anyone interested in what it was to be young and Welsh - and are now older and maybe a little wiser.
Edited and with an introduction by David Cottis, andfollowing on from A Dirty Broth, which looked at thepioneers of the Welsh theatre in English, A Ladder of Wordsexplores the period either side of the Second World War,a time when Welsh playwrights enjoyed unprecedentedcommercial success, both at home and in the West End.
This Anthology, the first in a series of three, brings together three plays from the beginnings of Welsh playwriting in English; Change by J. O. Francis (1913), Taffy by Caradoc Evans (1923), and A Comedy of Good and Evil (1924) by Richard Hughes.
Bound together by blood ties, Martha, Jack and Shanco live ona farm in west Wales where their lives unfold in their eerie half-presence of their dead parents. Glimmers of understanding punctuate their relationship with oneanother, but unspoken animosity seems to be the most potentingredient.
The six sequential essays in this collection provide anarrative of a century and a half of Welsh painting,written with an emphasis on issues of social classand national identity.
In this clear and absorbing memoir John Sam Jones writes of a life lived on the edge. It is story of journeys and realisation, of acceptance and joy. From a boyhood on the coast of Wales to a traumatic period studying at Aberystwyth, to a scholarship at Berkley in California as the AIDS epidemic began to take hold before returning to Liverpool and north Wales to work in community engagement and sexual health. A journey of becoming a writer and chronicler of his experiences with award-winning books and the desire to become a campaigner for LGBT rights in Wales. The adventure of running a guest house in Barmouth where he eventually became Mayor with his husband, a German academic, who he had married after a long partnership. Three weeks after the European Referendum they put the business on the market and moved to Germany. John is still on that journey.
When Biddy Wells's elderly mother is suddenly struck down with a mysterious illness, Biddy moves her into the spare bedroom. Through the months that follow, the women have to re-inhabit the close domestic proximity that they'd abandoned decades before and learn how to co-exist within a tangled web of emotional need.
It's 1954 and nine-year-old Mira's life is about to change forever. After a typhoid outbreak rages through her town, robbing her of her parents and siblings, the orphaned child is forced to live with her mysterious, depressive Aunt Hana, a figure both frightening and fragile.
It is the summer of 1954. Four young men, on a summer vacation buyan old car from a farmer and drive it from the hills of Wales all theway to the mountains of Spain. They are innocent and war-scarred, dreamersand realists, men but not much more than boys. This will be their summer to remember.
This collection is an open invitation. It is a bringing together of previously untold perspectives: creativeessays with no hard lines or prescriptive margins. No normative spotlights, only an open space to speak,and be heard.
From the remote forests of northern Ontario to aNeolithic burial chamber on the coast of north Wales,from a frozen lake in the Canadian wilderness to amysterious Welsh heath, Shatter Cones takes thereader on a strange, compelling and sometimesheart-breaking journey through the blurry juncturesthat bind together landscapes and lovers.
HELLO FRIEND WE MISSED YOU is a deeply poignant and bleakly comic debut novel about loneliness, the 'violent revenge thriller' category on Netflix, solipsism, rural gentrification, Jack Black, and learning to exist in the least excruciating way possible.
The Crossing bridges the past and the present andconnects Wales with America, as it tells of coal ownersand coal workers in the age of great transatlantic linersand fortunes to be made.
Cassandra Fish believes she is out of this world, wearing her orangefilm-set spacesuit daily in the hope that her absent parents will returnand take her back to her real planet. While she waits she accompaniesher friends on one last great night out to drink, dance, take bad chemicals, have bad trips,have bad ideas, and do unthinkable thing
How to Carry Fire was born from the ashes of familyaddiction. Beginning with the burning down of her childhoodhome, Thatcher explores how fire can both destroy and cleanse. Her work recognises embers everywhere: in farmhouses, heroinneedles, poisonous salamanders.
Saints and Lodgers offers an introduction to the wide range of Davies's poetry which lies beyond his famous reputation. Here are hymns to the beauty of his native South Wales and to the natural world, poems in praise of lives lived on the margins and on the streets, drinking songs and songs of the sea.
Join Peter as he ascends Orangutan Overhang, Supermassive Black Hole and Mental Lentils in the disused Dinorwig slate quarries of Snowdonia. Part creative nonfiction, part memoir and sports documentary, Slatehead is set in Thatcher''s Britain and the present day.
These sharp, ironic and compelling stories are perfect hard gems of observationabout the truths of everyday life: kindness and friendship balance precariouslywith obsession and desire.
At the heart of Country Dance is Ann Goodman, a young woman torn by the struggle for supremacy in her mixed blood, Welsh and English. This first-person account of passion, murder, and cultural conflict is set in the border country in the late 19th century, and the rural way of life is no idyll but rather a savage and exacting struggle for survival.
This anthology brings together the winning entries to the Penfro Festival's Poetry and Prose competitions, selected by Rhiannon Hooson and Niall Griffiths.
Sliced Tongue and Pearl Cufflinks explores fractured connections of self, family and home, laying bare the devastating impact of traumatisation against language and identity in its unflinching quest to communicate the brittle reality of everyday life at theedge.
Hey Bert contains poems that speak intensely of the everyday, of nostalgia, friendship and love, the body, the sacred, all seen through Pastore's unique, eccentric filter of spirit animals, pop-culture, dreams and astrology.
The seventh-most spoken language in the world,Bengali is home to some of the most distinctivepoetry ever written anywhere. Starting with thelater poems of Nobel Laureate RabindranathTagore, there has been a long and continuousline of modern poetry in the language.
A remarkable new selection in translation from the preeminent Turkish poet, Haydar Ergulen. The poems have been translated by a team of 13 translators, who include the co-editors of the book.
Hymns Ancient & Modern, New & Selected Poems, brings together the best of Brookes from four books and booklets, published from the early 90s: 43 Poems, The Dresden Cantata, Book, and More Last Poems and some new editions.
A family already struggling is ung headlong apart from each other in grief....In this atmospheric novella, the mysterious Plankton Collector visits members of a family torn apart by grief and regret. He comes in different guises. For ten-year old Mary, he is Mr Smith who takes her on a train journey to the seaside. Her mother, Rose, meets him as Stephen, by her son's graveside. Rose's youngest, Bunny, encounters him as the gardener. For husband and father David, meanwhile, the meeting is with a love from his youth. And long-lost Uncle Barnaby takes the children for a week's holiday during which their parents begin a reconciliation.A wound will heal, and knit them back together....All visitors are manifestations of the Plankton Collector who teaches those he encounters the difference between the discarded weight of unhappy memories and the lightness borne by happiness recalled.'A brilliantly evoked examination of memory and innocence... delivers a kaleidoscope of compelling voices united by a spectral visitor, not from the heights, but the apparent depths. Haunting.' James Clammer, author of Why I Went Back'A delicate paean for coming together, full of understanding for the quirks and pitfalls and ultimate goodness in human nature.' Mavis Cheek'Cath Barton tells the story... with a lyrical voice that is very much her own. This beautifully structured novella leads the reader to a resolution that is both moving and deeply satisfying.' Francesca Rhydderch, author of The Rice Paper DiariesIn haunting, exquisite prose the author explores the disconnects that exist within families as each deals with the internal difficulties inherent in life as it progresses. Moments of happiness can be overshadowed by loss, yet it is the former that should be granted attention and treasured... In this short novella a world has been conjured that recognises the depths of unhappiness yet offers hope. It reminds that reactions when grieving are neither uniform nor prescriptive, but that individuals, once known, are never entirely lost. Jackie Law, @followthehens'As light and fleeting as a happy memory... caring and heart-warming... about people with memories we could all share. It will resonate deeply with anyone who has been through trauma. But anyone who has longed for happier, simpler times will find nostalgic memories becoming lighter too.' James Lloyd, The Cardiff Review'Utterly convincing... so that the reader steps easily into the story, watching the characters` lives unfold at close quarters, hoping and yearning with them. The last few sentences brought me to tears. We all need our own Plankton Collector.' Robin Walker, amazon.co.uk'Unusual and skillfully crafted tale... filled with sublime descriptive language that has left lasting images in my mind.' Clement, amazon.co.uk'Poetic... skilful... a heart-breaking picture of love, regret, loss and ultimate reconciliation. Thoroughly recommended.' Martin, amazon.co.uk'Effortlessly creates a heady mixture of mid-century real world and magical realism.' Sheesh, amazon.co.uk'There's a flow to the language which is like... rocking gently in a boat... the characters are drawn with such subtly, honesty, and compassion. Even though the central event of the book is coming to terms with death, it was... the quiet disintegration and equally quiet rebuilding of a marriage... that had me riveted.... a short, utterly original, very human, marvelous book.' H Hewett, amazon.com
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