Author: Andrew Green
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In Bunhill Fields
This week we paid a visit to a place that’s been on my wish list for many years: Bunhill Fields. Some might think it a perverse pilgrimage, because Bunhill Fields isn’t not a rural glade or open park, but an old burial ground – the origin of ‘Bunhill’ is thought to be ‘bone hill’ –…
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Norman McLaren’s ‘Neighbours’
In the year I was born, 1952, just seven years after the end of the Second World War, the National Film Board of Canada in Montreal released a remarkable political film entitled Neighbours. Just over eight minutes long, it was the work of Norman McLaren, a Scottish director who’d settled in Canada. It was widely…
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Cymru yn cynhesu
Ydy, mae’n digwydd Erbyn hyn does dim amheuaeth. Datganodd yr IPCC (UN International Panel on Climate Change) y mis yma fod tymheredd y blaned yn rhwym o godi’n sylweddol. Y brawddegau allweddol yn yr adroddiad yw’r rhain: Amcangyfrir bod gweithgareddau dynol wedi achosi tua 1.0°C o gynhesu byd eang yn uwch na lefelau cyn-ddiwydiannol ……
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The Monmouthshire and Caerleon Antiquarian Association
1 Origins and foundations The first local archaeological society in Wales, the Caerleon Antiquarian Association, was founded on 28th October 1847. It owed its existence largely to the efforts of one man, John Edward Lee (1). Born in Hull in 1808, Lee worked from the age of sixteen in his uncles’ shipping office, but…
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Mr Deas
Another birthday, and I’m celebrating by throwing out yet more paper hoarded over the years. This time it includes a dark red ring-file containing notes and essays from my first-year university course in Classics. They’re written in handwriting it’s still quite easy to make out. (By contrast, my handwriting today, disabled by decades of keyboard…
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In search of 100 objects
September 2018 has turned out to be a month of personal endings. Three weeks ago, after five and a half years of sporadic legwork, we finished the last mile of the Wales Coast Path. This week saw the publication of two books I’ve been working on for what seems almost as long, Wales in 100…
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Sgythia
Pe bawn i’n nofelydd hanesyddol, byddwn i’n meddwl dwywaith cyn dewis Dr John Davies Mallwyd fel ffigwr canolog fy llyfr. Ysgolhaig oedd John Dafis (Davies) – yr ysgolhaig disgleiriaf o oes y Dadeni yng Nghymru, ac un o’n hysgolheigion amlycaf erioed. Ei brif gampau oedd diwygio Beibl William Morgan a chyhoeddi gramadeg a geiriaduron Cymraeg…
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The portraits of Kyffin Williams
This article is based on a talk given to The Arts Society: Brecknock in Theatr Brycheiniog, Brecon on 11 September 2018 to mark the centenary of Kyffin Williams’s birth. Introduction My starting point is a talk given by Peter Lord as the Kyffin Williams lecture for 2018 at Oriel Môn, entitled ‘The portraits of Kyffin…
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Wales Coast Path, day 13: Swansea to Mumbles
This may be Day 13 in the geographical series, but chronologically it’s number 95 – Sunday 9 September 2018, and the very last stage of our Wales Coast Path journey. We‘ve left our ‘home stretch’, one of the flattest in the whole course of the Path, till last. It’s a route – along the track…
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What the bishop said to the queen
I suspect most people visit Llangathen, in the Tywi valley, to see the wonderful restored gardens at Aberglasne (Aberglasney in its Anglicised form). But the village has other things to offer: a surprisingly bright and roomy neo-Tudor ‘Temperance Hall’, and the large church of St Cathen. (The village used to be more populous than it…