gwallter

  • There’s been much talk, since Donald Trump kidnapped the President of Venezuela and declared that he would ‘run’ the country, of a reassertion of the Monroe Doctrine.  This set me thinking about what exactly is or was the ‘Monro Doctrine’,…

  • Mansfield Park isn’t, I suspect, the favourite novel of Jane Austen of those who value her for her cutting wit and comforting social outlook. Because, though not without its share of humour, it’s a far from comforting work.  It asks…

  • The Trump administration has just opened a new front in its intensifying war on the rest of the world.  It’s a typographical war, and it concerns a common font called Calibri. Personally, I’m quite fond of Calibri, and use it…

  • Ar ddechrau mis Rhagfyr digwyddodd rhywbeth rhagorol yn Abertawe.  Mae trigolion y ddinas wedi hen arfer disgwyl clywed newyddion o fath gwahanol.  Dirywiad, wedi’r cwbl, fu ei hanes ers blynyddoedd maith – ei economi yn methu, pob corff cyhoeddus bron…

  • In front of me is a 24-page pamphlet published by ‘second aeon publications’ in 1971.  It’s held together with a couple of rusting staples and contains seventeen short poems, typewritten and photocopied.  Back then, that’s how you produced a skinny…

  • The rose field, published in October, completes Philip Pullman’s massive ‘Book of dust’ trilogy.  More than that, it completes the whole cycle of ‘Lyra’ novels that Pullman began thirty years ago with Northern lights.  It seems to me that it’s…

  • This is the edited text of a public talk given in Bangor University on Wednesday 19 November 2025 about the eleven oil paintings by Kyffin Williams housed in the University.  The talk was followed by a guided tour of the…

  • We’ll call him Dai Stoneface.  He stares out at us with dark, gouged eyes.  Someone has flattened his nose in an ancient fight, the same with the ears.  Could he have been a professional boxer?  Even the mouth is belligerent,…

  • 1 It’s my first time in the Swansea Arena auditorium.  The building opened more than three years ago, but its usual diet of lesser comedians and tribute bands has never held much appeal.  But tonight’s different: the first of three…

  • Ar 31 Hydref cyhoeddodd UNESCO fod Aberystwyth/Ceredigion wedi ennill statws ‘dinas llenyddiaeth’, gan ymuno â rhai cannoedd o leoliadau eraill ledled y byd a gydnabyddir am eu ‘ymrwymiad i ddiwydiannau creadigol a bywyd diwylliannol’. (Does dim ‘dinas’ gonfensiynol yn yr…

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