gwallter

  • Last week the National Trust kindly asked me to give a talk based on the items in an exhibition in Newton House, Dinefwr, Unlocked: 125 objects from Dinefwr.  The choice of objects, most of them connected to Newton House and…

  • Felicia Hemans, the leading woman poet of the Romantic period in Britain, came to Wales in 1800 when she was seven years old.  (Felicia Browne was her original name: her father, George, owned a wine-importing business.)  Her first home was…

  • It might seem that everything that can be said about angels has already been said.  But Jim Crace, in his latest novel, eden, gives them a new look, and a new, sinister identity.  In his eden (not Eden, you’ll notice)…

  • This week I finally managed to get to St Illtud’s Church in Llanelltyd, near Dolgellau, and see for myself the stone, just over three feet tall and chained up like a dog, that sits on a low plinth at the…

  • Pedair brawddeg sy gan Wicipedia i’w ddweud am Watkyn Hezekiah Williams.  Ond yn ei ddydd roedd ‘Watcyn Wyn’ yn adnabyddus iawn fel bardd, ac fel sefydlwr ysgol nodedig, Ysgol Gwynfryn, Rhydaman.   Dim ond arbenigwyr, siŵr o fod, sy’n darllen ei…

  • When I used to travel to London regularly, the Courtauld Gallery was one of my favourite places to visit.  Last weekend I went back, for the first time since its extraordinarily expensive (£57m) makeover, which closed it for three years. …

  • Years ago my friend C and I challenged each other to read, all the way through, a Classic Long Book.  My challenge was Moby-Dick, and his was Bleak House.  Whether C ever reached Melville’s majestic final line, ‘… and the…

  • I’m no Alfred Wainwright, and this is no marathon journey like the one he devised across northern England, but on 19 September I made up my own coast-to-coast walk. It’s worth sharing with you, since in its small way it’s…

  • In 1879, years before he became known as the world’s most famous society portrait painter, John Singer Sargent left Paris, where he had trained as an artist in the studio of Carolus-Duran, and travelled south, to Spain and north Africa.  Carolus-Duran…

  • Pan enillodd Sioned Erin Hughes y Fedal Ryddiaith yn Eisteddfod Genedlaethol Tregaron ym mis Awst am ei chasgliad o straeon byrion Rhyngom, roedd yr ymateb gan ddarllenwyr yn gynnes ac yn frwd.  A dim syndod, achos bod y llyfr yn…

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