Author: Andrew Green
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Lloyd George a’r bachgen yn y llun
Cricieth, 1890: David Lloyd George, cyfreithiwr a gwleidydd, 27 mlwydd oed, a John Thomas, ffotograffydd, 52 mlwydd oed. Lloyd George: Ydych chi’n siŵr am y lle hwn, Mr Thomas? John Thomas: Dewis perffaith, dywedwn i, Mr Lloyd George. LlG: David, plîs, Mr Thomas. Dim angen ichi fod yn ffurfiol. Dyn y werin bobl ydw i,…
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Carmarthen to Aberystwyth by train
It’s our first time on the Gwili Railway – thanks to a nearly-three year old boy obsessed with trains, or, more accurately, steam locomotives. We spend several hours pottering back and forth along the four mile track between the Railway’s current termini, Abergwili Junction and Danycoed, on two trains, one pulled by a steam engine,…
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Celf gyfoes yn yr Eisteddfod heb waliau
Y farn unfrydol bron yw bod Eisteddfod Caerdydd 2018 yn llwyddiant ysgubol. Dim syndod mewn ffordd: tywydd caredig, llawer o ymwelwyr, enillwyr teilwng yn y prif gystadlaethau, cerddoriaeth ragorol, a ffrinj bywiog, gan gynnwys y croeso adre ecstatig i Geraint Thomas. Ond y prif reswm, heb os, yw’r ffaith bod dim ffens o gwmpas y…
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Gerhard Bersu and ‘hostile environments’
As I was wandering round the Manx Museum in Douglas last week – it’s a first-class museum with imaginative displays and zero dumbing-down – a name sprang out of one of the panels in the section on Manx prehistory that took me straight back to my student archaeology days. The name was that of Gerhard…
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Wales Coast Path, day 79: Church Bay from Valley
Just the two of us today, to finish our circuit of Anglesey. We get up early, plant one car at Church Bay and drive the other to Valley. No cloud and drizzle this morning, just a balmy breeze and powerful sunshine. For once I can’t avoid wearing my socially disastrous reversible sun hat. There’s no…
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Wales Coast Path, day 78: Cemaes from Church Bay
The driver of the Lewis-y-Llan 62 bus to Holyhead needs nerves of steel. She takes the three of us at a good pace on the main road from Cemaes as far as Llanrhuddiad, and then turns off to Rhyd-wyn, down a long single track road with no passing places. Meeting another vehicle would be difficult. …
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Wales Coast Path, day 77: Porth Amlwch to Cemaes
Have we made a mistake? After a month of the driest, hottest weather since the summer of 1976, C and I chosen today to start our final, three-day campaign of the Wales Coast Path, from Porth Amlwch to Valley, on a less than tropical day. It’s dark, drizzly and clouds are so low that Cadair…
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The Mundaneum
Until last week I’d never heard of the Mundaneum. But it’s such an exceptional institution that it deserves to be much better known. To visit the Mundaneum as it is today you need to go the Wallonian city of Mons and search out the Rue de Nimy. There, in an adapted department store, you’ll find…
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Listening to your own voice
I have a memory of making a cassette recording of my granny, on one of our summer visits to Ayr in the 1960s, reciting a poem by Robert Burns. Burns was born and brought up in Alloway, just down the road, and Granny had a natural feel for his language and his verse, and she…
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Tories go to Hell
After a week of poisonous anarchy among our Tory rulers it seems apt to give space to a cartoon in Welsh, issued in Llanrwst as a woodcut print in around 1834-36 (according to Peter Lord). The artist is James Cope. Almost nothing is known about him, except that he was born in Caernarfonshire in 1805…