Archive for 2016
The new eschatology
As 2016 comes to an end the heavens are full of what Flann O’Brien’s great scientist De Selby called ‘black air’. A long night, it appears, is about to fall on two continents. In the United States a plutocratic bully and egomaniac with the crudest social and political attitudes is about to take power, unrestrained […]
Paul Nash
The big Paul Nash exhibition now on at Tate Britain is a great show. Not just because it’s an unusually big and comprehensive review of his work, but because it raises so many interesting questions – about the part of an artist in homegrown and international traditions, about art’s relationship with the state in times […]
Cynulliad neu Senedd?
Yn ddiweddar iawn cyhoeddodd Elin Jones AC, Llywydd Cynulliad Cenedlaethol Cymru, wahoddiad inni leisio ein barn am gynnig i newid enw’r Cynulliad. Ei dadl yw bod y Cynulliad, dros y bymtheg mlynedd a mwy ers ei sefydliad, yn haeddu enw sy’n fwy urddasol a chywir na’i enw presennol, wrth i’r pwerau sy ganddo gynyddu (bydd […]
Cadbury capitalism
All my life I’ve been a chocolate addict. The high point of a visit to my granny’s at Howden was when she would open a secret drawer and give me some. At home my mother used to hide bars in a high cupboard, well away from a small boy’s fingers. I repeated the trick when […]
Against heritage
Having spent a big chunk of my adult life trying to help look after bits of it, I’ve developed a strong dislike, bordering on contempt, for the word ‘heritage’. Why, I wonder? Etymologically it’s an innocent enough word – something inherited, passed on from one individual or community or age to another. So what’s so […]
Magnus Maximus, man and memory
Doing some research recently on the Roman fort and settlement of Segontium I found myself face to face with a Roman emperor, Magnus Maximus. His story is interesting but not unusual. Later memory of him, especially in his guise as Macsen Wledig, is singular. His face stares out of coins he had minted to cement […]
Cribarth
It’s the morning of the Pumpkinification of Donald Trump. Three of us have fled the bloggers, tweeters and trolls, to the head of Cwm Tawe. We park in Ystradgynlais, near Ysgol Golwg y Cwm, and walk up to the track of the old Swansea Vale Railway. This and the Brecon and Neath Railway it connects with […]
Henri Gaudier-Brzeska and Ezra Pound
It’s exactly a hundred years since John Lane published Ezra Pound’s ‘memoir’ of the French sculptor Henri Gaudier-Brzeska, who died in action at Neuville-Saint-Vaast on the Western Front on 5 June 1915, aged 23 years. I first came across Gaudier-Brzeska and his work as a student in the early 1970s. I’d got into the habit […]
Charles William Mansel Lewis, painter
Last week I paid a visit to Parc Howard Museum and Art Gallery in Llanelli. I was on a particular mission in the museum, but had time to look round the paintings on display. The collection is mixed but interesting. It includes an early view of Llanelli from Furnace Quarry by the town’s most famous […]
Y £5 newydd: ymlaen i’r gorffennol
Yr wythnos ddiwethaf cyrhaeddodd fy mhapur pum punt newydd cyntaf. Ychydig ddyddiau cyn hynny derbyniais i trwy’r post The new Fiver, taflen (uniaith Saesneg – er bod fersiwn Cymraeg ar gael) gan Fanc Lloegr sy’n ceisio esbonio’r newid a rhoi cysur i’r cyhoedd. Rhaid imi gyfaddef, yn anaml iawn y byddwn i’n aros am eiliad […]