Download or read book Over the Hill and Round the Bend written by Richard Guise and published by Summersdale. This book was released on 2009-06-01 with total page 213 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Wanting to explore Wales by bicycle, Richard Guise sets off on a 567-mile trek that leads him through the Cambrian mountains, to picturesque towns and Cardigan Bay. With wry wit he tells of his grapples with the weather and unwieldy place names, and weaves surprising nuggets of local history into this tale of an intrepid English cyclist in Wales.

Download or read book Welsh Gothic written by Jane Aaron and published by University of Wales Press. This book was released on 2013-05-15 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Welsh Gothic, the first study of its kind, introduces readers to the array of Welsh Gothic literature published from 1780 to the present day. Informed by postcolonial and psychoanalytic theory, it argues that many of the fears encoded in Welsh Gothic writing are specific to the history of Welsh people, telling us much about the changing ways in which Welsh people have historically seen themselves and been perceived by others. The first part of the book explores Welsh Gothic writing from its beginnings in the last decades of the eighteenth century to 1997. The second part focuses on figures specific to the Welsh Gothic genre who enter literature from folk lore and local superstition, such as the sin-eater, cŵn Annwn (hellhounds), dark druids and Welsh witches.

Download or read book The Rough Guide to Wales written by Catherine Le Nevez and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2009-05 with total page 549 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The guide includes hundreds of listings of the all the top places to eat, drink and stay, whatever your budget. There is plenty of good advice on outdoor pursuits, including some of the best mountain and coastal walks, and activities from surfing on the Gower to climbing in Snowdonia.

Download or read book Eutopia written by M. Wynn Thomas and published by University of Wales Press. This book was released on 2021-01-15 with total page 386 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Brexit debates confirmed how Wales’s relationship to Europe has for too long been discussed exclusively, narrowly and suffocatingly in terms of its social, political and economic aspects. As a contrast, this volume sets out to explore the rich, inventive and exhilarating spectrum of pro-European sentiment evident from 1848 to 1980 in the writings of Welsh intellectuals and creative writers. It ranges from the era of O. M. Edwards, through the interwar period when both right wing (Saunders Lewis) and left wing (Cyril Cule) ideologies clashed, to the post-war age when major writers such as Emyr Humphreys and Raymond Williams became influential. This study clearly demonstrates that far from being insular and parochial, Welsh culture has long been hospitably internationalist. As the very title Eutopia concedes, there have of course been frequently utopian aspects to Wales’s dreams of Europe. However, while some may choose to dismiss them as examples of mere wishful thinking, others may fruitfully appreciate their aspirational and inspirational aspects.

Download or read book American Interior written by Gruff Rhys and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2014-05-08 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: American Interior is a psychedelic historical travelogue from Welsh pop legend Gruff Rhys. In 1792, John Evans, a twenty-two-year-old farmhand from Snowdonia, Wales, travelled to America to discover whether there was indeed, as widely believed, a tribe of Welsh-speaking native Americans still walking the great plains. In 2012, Gruff Rhys set out on an 'investigative concert tour' in the footsteps of John Evans, with concerts in New Orleans, Baltimore, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, St Louis, North Dakota and more. American Interior is the story of these journeys. It is also an exploration of how wild fantasies interact with hard history and how myth-making can inspire humans to partake in crazy, vain pursuits of glory, including exploration, war and the creative arts. Gruff Rhys is known around the world for his work as a solo artist as well as singer and songwriter with Super Furry Animals and Neon Neon, and for his collaborations with Gorillaz, Dangermouse, Sparklehorse, Mogwai and Simian Mobile Disco amongst others. The latest album by Neon Neon, Praxis Makes Perfect, based on the life of radical Italian publisher Giangiacomo Feltrinelli, was recently performed as an immersive live concert with National Theatre Wales.

Download or read book Owen Rhoscomyl written by John S. Ellis and published by University of Wales Press. This book was released on 2016-11-15 with total page 206 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Around the turn of the century, Welsh readers thrilled to the heroic stories of Owen Rhoscomyl. Having been a cowboy, frontiersman, soldier and mercenary, Rhoscomyl was as adventurous and exotic as his stories. Roving the wilds of the American West, Patagonia and South Africa before finally settling in Wales, Rhoscomyl was a flawed hero who led a rough life that exacted a personal price in poverty, delinquency and violence. He identified deeply with the Welsh nation as a source of tradition, legitimacy and belonging within a wider imperial world. As a popular commercial writer of historical romance, imperial adventure, popular history and public spectacle, he rejected accusations of national inferiority, effeminacy and defeatism in his depictions of the Welsh as an inherently masculine and martial people, accustomed to the rugged conditions of the frontier, ready to advance the glory of their nation and eager to lead the British imperial enterprise. This literary biography will explore the vaulting ambitions, real achievements, and bitter disappointments of the life, work and milieu of Owen Rhoscomyl.

Download or read book In the Shadow of the Pulpit written by M. Wynn Thomas and published by University of Wales Press. This book was released on 2009-10-15 with total page 386 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ranging from the nineteenth-century to the present, this book explores several central aspects of the ways in which the English-language poetry and fiction of Wales has responded to what was, for a crucial period of a century or so, the dominant culture of Wales: the culture of Welsh Nonconformity. In the introduction, the author reflects on why no sustained attempt has hitherto been made to investigate one of the formative cultural influences on modern 'Anglo-Welsh' literature, the Nonconformist inheritance. The importance of addressing this strange and significant cultural deficit is then explained, and a preliminary attempt made to capture something of the spirit of Welsh Nonconformity. The succeeding chapters address and seek to answer such questions as: What exactly did the Welsh chapels believe and do? Why have the English-language writers of Wales, from Caradoc Evans and Dylan Thomas to R.S. Thomas and the authors of today, been so fascinated by them? How accurate are the impressions we've been given of chapel life and chapel people in the English-language poetry and fiction of Wales? The answers offered may alter our views both of the Welsh Nonconformist past and of Welsh writing in English. One of the ideas advanced is that many of Wales' most important writers went to war with the preachers in their texts, and that their work is therefore the site of cultural struggle. Theirs was a war in words waged to determine who would have the last word on modern Welsh experience.

Download or read book The Welsh and the Medieval World written by Patricia Skinner and published by University of Wales Press. This book was released on 2018-02-07 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Entry point into Welsh migration by experts: many of the contributors have longer studies that students can then read; Multi-disciplinary: shows how historical and literary sources can be read together, includes new archaeological data Showcases new work by a new generation of Welsh historians.

Download or read book The Nations of Wales written by M. Wynn Thomas and published by University of Wales Press. This book was released on 2016-05-20 with total page 343 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Opens up a period in Welsh cultural history that has been almost completely overlooked First monograph to explore Welsh history between 1890-1914

Download or read book People Places and Passions written by Russell Davies and published by University of Wales Press. This book was released on 2015-06-15 with total page 502 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It takes a different view of the history of Wales, examining a panorama of different emotions and experiences – laughter, happiness, fear, anger, adventure, lust, loneliness, anxiety – to give an entertaining and exciting new history to Wales. a wide range of sources are used to present the ambitions and anxieties which drove and destroyed Welsh people The book’s literary style and the fact that it follows earlier successful studies by the author should ensure an audience.

Download or read book Footsteps of Liberty and Revolt written by Mary-Ann Constantine and published by University of Wales Press. This book was released on 2013-04-15 with total page 350 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A collection of essays exploring the impact on Welsh culture of one of the most exciting periods in history, the decades surrounding the French Revolution of 1789.

Download or read book John Ormonds Organic Mosaic written by Kieron Smith and published by University of Wales Press. This book was released on 2019-10-15 with total page 231 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: • This book is the only extended study of John Ormond’s poetry and films. • It is a contribution to the history of BBC television. • It is a contribution to the history of the documentary film form, particularly in a national context. • It is a contribution to the cultural history of Wales. • It is a case study in inter-artistic creative practice.

Download or read book Henry V written by Deborah Fisher and published by Pen and Sword History. This book was released on 2022-12-02 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: There are many books about King Henry V, several of which concentrate entirely on his victory at the Battle of Agincourt in 1415. This one looks at his life from a different point of view, concentrating on places that were important in his life and can still be visited by those interested in getting a better feel for the man and understanding how his character was shaped by his environment. Henry spent much of his youth on military campaigns in Ireland, Wales and the Marches. As Prince of Wales, he became battle-hardened as a teenager when he received a near-fatal wound at Shrewsbury. Despite a fraught relationship with his father, he quickly reinvented himself as a model king, and set his eyes firmly on the crown of France. Thereafter, much of his nine-year reign was spent on military campaigns beyond the British Isles. The book takes its reader on a journey from the rural areas around Monmouth, where he was born, to Harlech Castle, where he put an end to Owain Glyndwr's rebellion, and from his coronation at Westminster Abbey to his private retreat at Kenilworth. We see him seize Harfleur and take the long road to Calais, culminating in the Battle of Agincourt, one of the most spectacular victories ever won by an English army. We follow his continued campaigns in France, through his marriage to Catherine of Valois at Troyes, to his eventual, tragically premature, death at Vincennes.

Download or read book Revolution to Devolution written by Kenneth O. Morgan and published by University of Wales Press. This book was released on 2014-09-15 with total page 346 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It meets the need of the target market both as a historical and commentary based on lifelong research and as the work of a working member of the House of Lords involved in the contemporary political process at a central level. This is an integrated range of studies, focussing on Wales, by a long-established, internationally-recognised academic authority and member of the House of Lords Few other historians since the 1960s (when I was an acknowledged pioneer from 1963 onwards) have focussed on the history of 19th and 20th century Wales

Download or read book Postcolonialism Revisited written by Kirsti Bohata and published by University of Wales Press. This book was released on 2009-06-15 with total page 223 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Postcolonialism Revisited is a ground-breaking book, the first to explore and analyse Anglophone Welsh writing, both literary and otherwise, in the context of contemporary thinking about colonial and post-colonial cultures. Kirsti Bohata considers how far the paradigms of postcolonial theory may be usefully adopted and adapted to provide an illuminating exploration of Welsh writing in English, while simultaneously considering the challenges that such writing might offer to the field of postcolonial theory. In addition to dealing with a range of theorists in the field, including Frantz Fanon, Albert Memmi, Charlotte Williams and Homi Bhabha, the book looks at how Wales has been constructed as a colonized nation in nineteenth- and twentieth-century writing. Themed chapters include the treatment of place in English- and Welsh-language writing of the 1950s and 1960s; hybridity and assimilation; the position of the Welsh as 'outsiders inside'; the women's movement in Wales during the fin de siecle; and postcolonial understanding of linguistic power struggles. A variety of forgotten writers have been unearthed in this study and are considered alongside more famous names such as R. S. Thomas, Margiad Evans, Arthur Machen, Christopher Meredith and Rhys Davies. Written in an accessible style, Postcolonialism Revisited will be required reading for those involved in the study of Welsh writing in English.

Download or read book The Last Days of Owain Glynd r written by Gruffydd Aled Williams and published by . This book was released on 2017 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This impressive book reveals surprising new facts about the man who still fires the Welsh imagination, Owain Glyndwr, through rigorous assessment of evidence in contemporary manuscripts and printed sources. Color photos.

Download or read book Bangor University 1884 2009 written by David Roberts and published by University of Wales Press. This book was released on 2009-09-01 with total page 166 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book relates to one of Wales's most important institutions of higher education, covering its history from its creation in 1884 as the University College of North Wales, its incarnation as the University of Wales, Bangor and to its 125th anniversary in 2009. The book traces the institution's origins as an 18th century coaching inn with just 58 students to its current status as an institution enjoying multi-million pound investment in staff and buildings in the twenty-first century. The story is one of heroic struggle, personal endeavour, financial crises, political unrest, academic distinction and student devotion. This account traces the growth and development of the institution, focusing on the personalities who shaped its direction and the changing nature of student life on the campus. The underlying theme of the book is academic progress, placed within the context of Welsh political, social and economic development during the last century, and also covers the first few years of the twenty-first.