Archive for 2013
Llais tawel Dafydd Pritchard
Aderyn prin yw llyfr newydd gan y Prifardd Dafydd John Pritchard. Felly dylid croesawu ei gasgliad diweddaraf o gerddi, Lôn Fain (Barddas, 2013), yn frwd iawn. Ddaw ystyr llythrennol ‘Lôn Fain’ ddim yn eglur inni tan y tudalen olaf, ond mae’r bardd yn ein paratoi at y gerdd derfynol, ‘Wrth fedd fy mrawd’, trwy’r casgliad […]
Wales Coast Path, day 6: Penarth from Barry
At Bridgend we change to the miniature Platform 1A, gateway to all true adventures on the Vale of Glamorgan line. It’s cold and the fog is thick. The train creeps across the Porthkerry viaduct, unseeing and unseen. We leave at Barry – Barry Central to be precise, since like all respectable towns Barry has several […]
John Fahey, American primitive?
Like many teenagers of the late 1960s I was first awakened to what would become my most treasured music by the late John Peel. His weekly programme Top Gear on Radio One was unmissable. It was almost the only place you could come across American musicians ignored by the mainstream (Peel had worked on a […]
The Library of Birmingham
The city of Birmingham is famous for reinventing itself. No sooner are buildings thrown up than plans are hatched to raze them and start again. A good case is the central library. The ‘old’ library, an inverted concrete pyramid of stupendous brutality opened in 1974, has been abandoned in favour of a brand new block […]
Wales Coast Path, day 7: Barry from Rhoose
It’s a dry and sunny morning after torrential rain in Swansea. C and I are drawn back irresistibly to the famous ‘Rhoose Point Transport Interchange Car Park’, this time with H as our companion, for a gentle amble east to Barry. Suburbia is the theme of the first section of this stretch of the coastal […]
Wales Coast Path, day 8: Rhoose from St Donats
I’m back with C and J in the King George V Field, St Donats. The morning’s not as bright as the weather forecast promised, but there’s no wind, and it’s not cold. So off we march down the field to join the coast path, and turn east for Rhoose. We’re high above crumbly sandstone cliffs, […]
Alfred Russel Wallace, Cymru a radicaliaeth
Gan mlynedd ar ôl ei farwolaeth mae’r naturiaethwr o Gymru Alfred Russel Wallace o’r diwedd yn derbyn cydnabyddiaeth yn ein hamser ni am ei orchestion – nid yn unig am fod yn gyd-ddyfeisiwr, gyda Charles Darwin, o’r theori ‘esblygiad trwy ddetholiad naturiol’, ond hefyd am ei waith ar fioddaearyddiaeth a sawl pwnc arall. Dadorchuddiodd David […]
Introducing electronic legal deposit in the UK
One of the greatest of Lynne Brindley’s achievements during her twelve years in charge of the British Library was to remain steadfastly true to the Library’s aim, shared with the other UK copyright libraries, of extending the law of legal deposit to encompass publications in digital form. This article casts a retrospective and sometimes rueful […]
Emily Dickinson’s reticent volcano
It’s taken a long time for Emily Dickinson to come out. During her lifetime (1830-86) only ten of her roughly 1,800 extant poems were published, some of them without her knowledge. After her death her manuscripts lay disregarded by all but a few. It was not till 1955 that anything close to a complete edition […]
Knab Rock, summer 1996
In memoriam Evan Evans (1984-2013) 1 I walk down to the sea path – rust on horse chestnut leaves unprepared, this still day, to fall. 2 Fishing boats file across the bay – astern, black flags clear in the low afternoon light. 3 Crow, hands in pockets, scorns to hurry away – […]