books
Happy birthday Michael Rosen
When I consider how the government of our country – I mean the one with the satirical name ‘United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland’ – has fallen under the control of a set of unscrupulous and heartless gangsters, who lack any kind of moral standard or basic competence, and when I consider that […]
Sir Humphrey Mackworth, ‘a genius richer than thy mines below’
The earth, thy great exchequer, ready lies is the title of a superb new collection of stories by the Welsh writer Jo Lloyd, who won the BBC National Short Story Award in 2019. The nine pieces are very different one from another, in subject, setting and register. But they all share at least two things. […]
Some books I read in 2020
One of the very few consolations of Covid lockdowns has been that more people seem to have read more books during 2020. In the first half of the year fewer print books were sold, since bookshops were often closed, but UK sales of e-books increased by 17%, and audio books by 47%. I’ve certainly read […]
Richard Owain Roberts’s ‘Hello friend we missed you’
Hello friend we missed you is Richard Owain Roberts’s first novel. Published by Parthian, it was nominated for this year’s Guardian ‘Not the Booker’ prize. It duly won the award in October 2020 after a readers’ vote. In the book Roberts sets himself a big challenge: how to engage us as readers with a protagonist […]
Emily Dickinson’s ‘What care the Dead’
When I’m distracted or glum I often reach for the poems of Emily Dickinson. I’ve an old copy of Thomas H. Johnson’s complete edition, published in this country by Faber. It’s less of a book and more of a box. With its stocky build and 770 pages it looks like a box of postcards. You […]
Cymru a W.G. Sebald
Cyhoeddodd W.G. Sebald Austerlitz, ei nofel olaf (os mai nofel yw hi) yn Almaeneg yn 2001. Pan ddaeth y fersiwn Saesneg allan yn 2002, roedd yn syndod i ddarllenwyr yma i ddarganfod mai Cymru yw un o’i phrif leoliadau, mewn llyfr sy’n crwydro dros rannau helaeth o gyfandir Ewrop. Hanes dyn o’r enw Jacques Austerlitz […]
‘Reports of my death’: the many lives of Jean Rhys
False news is now so natural a part of our world that few people are surprised to read about the deaths of people who remain stubbornly alive. There are plenty of examples, many of them recent. Wikipedia lists over 300 in one of its more amusing pages, List of premature obituaries. The ‘reported death’ people […]
Circles of light
A virus, the Oxford English Dictionary tells us, is ‘an infectious, often pathogenic agent or biological entity … able to function only within the living cells of a host animal, plant, or microorganism’. It’s a dark and invisible thing, that threatens suffering and destruction. William Blake knew about the terrors it would bring: O Rose […]
Lludd and the three plagues
Lludd, son of Beli Mawr (‘Lud’ in English) is king of the Island of Britain, and a wise and successful ruler. From his capital, Caer Lludd (London), he takes care of his subjects, housing them well and supplying them with ample food and drink. One of his brothers, Llefelys, is king of France. So begins […]
A journey around my room
One of the many effects of the coronavirus pandemic has been to put a stop to all but the shortest and most qualified kinds of walking. But if social distancing means that your personal movement is restricted to walking around your own home (and garden, if you have one) and little more, that doesn’t mean […]
