Author Archive: Andrew Green
Wales Coast Path, day 1: Chepstow from Caldicot
A day of dogs and bridges. Dogs first. We start from the railway station at Caldicot, three of us this time. The path to the motorway and across to the coastline is studded with notices, official and handwritten, about the absolute unacceptability of dog shit. We try to construct a history that accounts for this […]
National Theatre Wales’s ‘Mametz’: a review
As part of Wales’s commemoration of the First World War, and almost exactly two years ahead of the centenary of the battle, National Theatre Wales has ‘staged’ a version of the fierce struggle for possession of Mametz Wood. This battle was fought over six days in July 1916 between largely Welsh volunteer soldiers and highly […]
Wales Coast Path, day 2: Caldicot from Goldcliff
Like many coastal settlements on the Bristol Channel Goldcliff still remembers the disastrous year 1607. Behind the Farmers Arms in St Mary Magdelene’s Church – a shady avenue of limes leads to its porch – a brass inscription, now about three feet above ground level, reads (the dates refer to the old Julian calendar) as […]
Diffyg gwybodaeth, diffyg democratiaeth
Am sawl rheswm leiciwn i ddim bod yn sgidiau Mark Drakeford, y Gweinidog Iechyd yng Nghymru. Yr wythnos hon mae ‘na reswm arall: arolwg cyhoeddus a gynhaliwyd gan ICM ar ran y BBC sy’n dangos bod 48% yn unig o oedolion yn y wlad yn gwybod taw e sy’n gyfrifol am y Gwasanaeth Iechyd yma. […]
Wales Coast Path, day 3: Goldcliff from Newport
We surprise J. by arriving early, for the first time ever. We’re at Lighthouse Road, Duffryn for a walk round the industrial underbelly of Newport and on into the Caldicot Levels. It’s a cloudy day, but warm, with the promise of faint sun later. The river Usk cuts a wide gash through the city, in […]
Coffee, public and private
Treorci is still a real town. It sits far enough up the Rhondda Fawr and has a big enough hinterland to support a good array of shops, mostly independent, and a lively civic life. The best way of approaching it is on the road from Ogmore Vale. The other day we drove down from Bwlch […]
In search of a younger self: John Clare and me
Thursday afternoon I’m in a café in Market Deeping, just north of Stamford, Lincolnshire. I buy a coffee and then pull out from my wallet two miniature black and white photographs from the early 1950s. They show a house that still stands, I think, somewhere in the village. One shows part of the frontage, the […]
Caratacus, Caradog, Caractacus
If Calgacus might be thought of as the earliest known anti-imperialist Scotland has produced, Wales has some claim on an earlier native leader of resistance to the Roman occupation of Britain, Caratacus. He’s a figure well worth excavating, as an historical character and as a focus of myth-making in the centuries since his time. 1 […]
Celf a chrefydd: George Herbert a’r anffyddiwr
Rai blynyddoedd yn ôl ces i wahoddiad i ymddangos ar y rhaglen radio Beti a’i phobl, i sgwrsio â Beti George a dewis ychydig o recordiadau. Un ohonynt oedd darn o waith sy’n bwysig iawn imi, ers y tro cyntaf imi ei glywed rhyw ugain mlynedd yn ôl: Spem in alium, y motét i ddeugain […]
Wales Coast Path, day 49: Llangrannog to New Quay
We’re back in Llangrannog, at an early hour, for a longish walk north to New Quay. It’s a cooler, cloudier morning, for which we’re thankful. From the beach the path climbs up, past Carreg Bica, a ‘great lump of freestanding Ordovician rock’, in Gerald Morgan’s words. Bica was a giant afflicted by toothache; in the […]