Archive for 2022
Cefn Bryn and the writers
The sandsone ridge of Cefn Bryn is an obvious magnet for painters, but it doesn’t seem to have drawn many creative writers, despite its brooding presence along the backbone of the Gower peninsula. One exception is Amy Dillwyn, the pioneering industrialist, feminist and lesbian, in her best-known work The Rebecca rioter (1880), an historical novel […]
Be welwch chi o gopa Cader?
Llynedd, am y tro cyntaf ers blynyddoedd, methais i ddringo i gopa Cadair Idris. Sa i’n gwbod pam. Covid a’i ofidiau, siŵr o fod, neu absenoldeb meddwl, neu ohirio oherwydd pwysau eraill. Ond, o edrych yn ôl, dwi’n teimlo rhyw fwlch bach yn fy mywyd, rhyw rwyg yn yr edafedd o lwybro rheolaidd ar y […]
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 […]
Tair cerdd gan Guillaume Apollinaire
Pont Mirabeau O dan bont Mirabeau rhed afon SeineAc ein serchauOes rhaid imi ddwyn i’m cofLlawenydd wastad yn dilyn y dolur Dechrau nosi taro’r cloc Treigla’r dyddiau sefyll wna i Law yn llaw arhoswn wyneb yn wynebTra dan y bontEin breichiau ymhlyg tremiau hir ton flinedig Dechrau nosi taro’r cloc Treigla’r dyddiau sefyll wna i […]
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 […]
Beyond shame and guilt
When I was a young student and easily impressed by big theory, I was struck by a book by E.R. Dodds called The Greeks and the irrational. Its origin was a series of lectures Dodd gave in California in 1949. Or, going further back, a conversation he’d had, while studying the Parthenon sculptures in the […]
Cymraeg ar y mynydd
Enillydd cyntaf Gwobr Ysgrif O’r Pedwar Gwynt yw Rebecca Thomas, cymrawd ôl-ddoethurol yr Academi Brydeinig ym Mhrifysgol Bangor. Ei maes academaidd yw hanes Cymru yn yr oesoedd canol cynnar, a chawn beth o’i gwybodaeth drwyadl o’r pwnc yn ei hysgrif fuddugol, sy’n dwyn y teitl ‘Cribo’r Dragon’s Back’. Er yn fyr, mae’r darn hwn yn […]