• The name Paul Oliver probably won’t ring a bell for you, unless you’re a vernacular architectural historian or a blues enthusiast.  But if you belong to either camp or (unlikely, but possible) both, then you’ll almost certainly feel a debt…

  • Rydyn ni’n hen gyfarwydd yng Nghymru â’r arfer o greu llynnoedd newydd.  Cronfeydd dŵr yw’r rhan fwyaf ohonyn nhw, wrth gwrs.  Mae eu henwau – Efyrnwy, Clywedog, Elan, Claerwen, Brianne, Tryweryn – yn niferus, ac yn atseinio’n alarus trwy’r degawdau,…

  • After five years of labour our baby was born last week.  It weighed in at a whopping 1.88 kilograms and almost 600 pages.  Its many parents are rightly proud of it.  You’ll have guessed by now that it’s a big…

  • Bruges may be his birthplace and where you’ll find his museum, but Swansea has a claim to be the second home of Frank Brangwyn, ever since his huge ‘British Empire’ panels were diverted from the House of Lords in London…

  • To mark Glenys Cour’s hundredth birthday the Mission Gallery is currently showing around thirty of her paintings, some oil on canvas, others oil on paper.  Most were painted in the last five years, so it’s a very different exhibition from…

  • Mention Sir Christopher Wren and most people will instantly think of St Paul’s Cathedral.  That includes Edmund Bentley, the inventor of the poetical form known, after his middle name, as the clerihew: Sir Christopher WrenSaid, ‘I am going to dine…

  • When I was a small boy there were certain places outside Hoylandswaine, the village where we lived, that I always thought of as my own, special spaces.  They were nowhere in particular – a corner where two roads met, or…

  • Ar 6 Ionawr 2024 ymgasglodd cryn nifer o gyfeillion a chyd-artistiaid yn ei thŷ yn y Mwmbwls i ddathlu pen-blwydd Glenys Cour yn 100 mlwydd oed.  Eisteddai Glenys yn ei chadair arferol yn y lolfa, gyda’i golygfa wych dros Fae…

  • In December 2023 the Welsh Government published its draft budget for 2024-25, a ‘budget to protect the services which matter most to you’.  As expected, the overall budget is seriously inadequate, thanks to the Westminster Government’s economic incompetence and its…

  • It’s been a writing year rather than a reading one, but as usual I’ve found so much to enjoy in books, many of them happened on by accident, often in charity shops.  The book club I belong to also threw…

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