history
Mysteries of Paraclete
Five minutes’ walk away, where Summerland Lane reduces to a narrow neck of tarmac to meet Newton Road, is Paraclete Chapel. In every respect it’s unremarkable, except for one thing, its highly unusual name. Till recently I’ve not thought much about the word ‘paraclete’, beyond knowing that it was vaguely connected with the Holy Spirit. […]
Heirloom
It’s made out of a single piece of oak and sits upright on the window sill, though its planed rear and central hole suggest it was originally intended to hang on a wall. The head of an adult man or a woman. The face framed by stylised hair locks, long, straight and deeply incised, and […]
Tlodi, nawr a ddoe
Beth yw tlodi? Am flynyddoedd bellach fe’i diffinnir yn y wlad hon fel ‘tlodi cymharol’. Hynny yw, dych chi’n dlawd os ydych chi’n derbyn incwm sy’n 60% yn is nag incwm cyfartal pobl eich cymuned. Dyw hi ddim yn syndod clywed fod tlodi o’r math hwn yn cynyddu ers blynyddoedd, wrth i anghyfartaledd godi, a […]
John Thelwall at Llyswen
Next week we’ll be completing the Wye Valley Walk, and one of our stops will be the Griffin Inn in the village of Llyswen, on the banks of the Wye half way between Brecon and Builth. Years ago, my colleague Jean Dane and I would often pause there for a coffee on our way from […]
Can the British Museum change?
The recent return to Nigeria of some of the Benin bronzes from collections across Europe has heightened the debate about ‘repatriating’ museum objects to the places from which they were illegally seized. The finely made bronze plaques and sculptures once adorned the royal palace in Benin City and were made over a lengthy period, from […]
Sir Boris Walpole and the cartoonists
It’s a commonplace that since George Osborne set in motion the immiseration of poor people, through his programme of austerity and big cuts in benefits, Britain has seemed to regress to the time of our Victorian ancestors. ‘Poor laws’, and the nineteenth century distinction between deserving and undeserving poor, are back with us, and so […]
William Blake, map-maker
You can’t wander far in south and mid-Wales in the early years of the nineteenth century without coming across the name of Benjamin Heath Malkin. The second edition of his book The scenery, antiquities and biography of south Wales, published in two volumes in 1807, was described by the historian R.T. Jenkins as ‘by far […]
Albania: from Stalin’s knees to pyramid schemes
Lea Ypi’s Free: coming of age at the end of history, published in 2021, is a very unusual book. It’s at once a rite-of-passage memoir – Lea is around eight or nine years old at the start and is about to leave school for university at the end – and a child’s view of one […]
Brwydr hir Rachel Barrett
Mae’n ddigon hysbys mai mudiad dosbarth canol, ar y cyfan, oedd y mudiad i ennill y bleidlais i ferched yn y DU yn ystod y blynyddoedd cyn y Rhyfel Byd Cyntaf. Cryfder oedd hyn i’r graddau fod gan yr ymgyrchwyr y sgiliau a’r hyder i ymgyrchu, a mynediad i rwydweithiau cymdeithasol dylanwadol. Ond golygodd absenoldeb […]
Learning about Welsh history
Estyn has published a review of teaching Welsh history in schools, including specifically the teaching of BAME history. It makes gloomy reading for anyone who believes that understanding where we are now in Wales, and where we might be in future, depend on a reasonable knowledge of how we got here. During the last twenty […]
