Why is the Welsh Government at war with culture?

January 5, 2024 12 Comments
Why is the Welsh Government at war with culture?

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 determination to impose Austerity Mark II on public services in advance of pre-election tax cuts.  […]

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Some books I read in 2023

December 30, 2023 7 Comments
Some books I read in 2023

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 up plenty of good reads, including the best novel I’ve read this year, Claire Keegan’s […]

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Return the Red Lady

December 22, 2023 6 Comments
Return the Red Lady

Languish is the right word.  In a corner of a remote museum there languish some ancient human bones.  They were discovered by William Buckland in 1823 in Paviland, or Goat’s Hole, one of the many caves that punctuate the limestone cliffs on the south coast of Gower.  The bones belonged to the person who became […]

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Desperate causes: Tristram’s unorthodox circumcision

December 16, 2023 0 Comments
Desperate causes: Tristram’s unorthodox circumcision

The early life of Tristram Shandy is marked by a series of unhappy accidents.  His conception is badly planned, thanks to an untimely question asked by his mother.  At his birth his nose is broken by Dr Slop, the inept man-midwife.  And he’s given the wrong forename, after the name his father has chosen gets […]

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Books of poems: gwallter’s top 10

December 8, 2023 6 Comments
Books of poems: gwallter’s top 10

For want of shelf space, I’m having to lay new books horizontally, on top of earlier books.  They threaten to warp and then turn solid, like sedimentary rocks.  Soon I’ll need to have another cull.  I doubt, though, whether the censor will make much of an impression on the three-shelf-long poetry collection.  Books of poems […]

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Two Carmarthen portraits

December 1, 2023 4 Comments
Two Carmarthen portraits

In Carmarthenshire Museum in Abergwili are two portraits painted in 1850 in oil on board by an artist called David Patrick.  They don’t seem to have attracted much attention outside the Museum, except by Paul Joyner, but both possess a strange attraction, and deserve to be better known. Little is known about David Patrick.  He […]

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New Atlantis: the vanishing of Tuvalu

November 24, 2023 0 Comments
New Atlantis: the vanishing of Tuvalu

In the daily TV quiz show Pointless, Tuvalu is a regularly pointless answer in ‘countries of the world’ rounds.  Even people who’ve heard of it would find it difficult to point to where it is with any accuracy on a map of the Pacific (latitude 5°–10° south, longitude 176°–180°).  It consists of three reef islands and […]

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Celf gyfoes, heb gartref yng Nghymru

November 17, 2023 2 Comments
Celf gyfoes, heb gartref yng Nghymru

Arddangosfa eithriadol sy’n llenwi Oriel Gregynog yn Llyfrgell Genedlaethol Cymru ar hyn o bryd.  Ei theitl yw ‘Cyfoes’, a’i hamcan yw dangos rhai i’r gweithiau celf – peintiadau a ffotograffau gan amlaf – y mae’r Llyfrgell wedi’u casglu yn ystod y degawdau diwethaf. Mae gwedd y sioe yn drawiadol.  Does dim gormod o weithiau, ac […]

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St Illtud’s Walk, day 5: Pontardawe to Creunant

November 10, 2023 2 Comments
St Illtud’s Walk, day 5: Pontardawe to Creunant

Forestry isn’t my favourite walking environment, and today has done nothing to shift that prejudice.  It all began so well.  Well, fairly well.  Today C. and I start out by bus.  But since our last encounter with St Illtud, First Cymru has done its best to destroy our local bus timetable.  It now takes nearly […]

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In praise of indexes

November 3, 2023 0 Comments
In praise of indexes

These days librarians belong to a much-diminished profession (they’re not the only ones).  But once you’ve become a librarian there are some things that stay with you for good.  Among them is a commitment to the ideas of the collective provision of goods – as in ‘things that do good to people’ – and the […]

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