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Daeth y newyddion yr wythnos hon bod Cyngor Dinas Caerdydd yn bwriadu cau Amgueddfa Caerdydd (‘Cardiff Museum’ neu ‘The Cardiff Story’ yn Saesneg), a leolir yn yr Hen Lyfrgell yn Yr Aes, reit yng nghanol y ddinas. Dymuniad doethion Cabinet…
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Dorian Gray discovers world music
In the cosy light of our post-colonial glow-lamps we tend to imagine that ‘world music’ was discovered, and given its long-deserved recognition, by our own generation. We still have dozens of LPs and CDs of Indian and west African music,…
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On magpies
We’d both noticed that there seemed to be more of them, now that the cold weather has arrived and the last of the leaves have fallen. Always in pairs, they perch like snipers on the higher branches of the large,…
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Pant Glas: a Meirionnydd commune in 1840
Barmouth was not the only place in Meirionnydd to host utopian settlements in the nineteenth century. Fanny Talbot’s Ruskinian village there was preceded by a quixotic attempt to set up a socialist commune in a very different part of the…
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Castle of light
Barmouth and utopia make an unlikely combination. But for a brief period the town, best known for its donkeys, candy-floss and Brummies, was the home of an idealistic social experiment, and an historic act of generosity. Fanny Talbot was born…
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Ar ddiymadferthwch
Dros y misoedd diwethaf mae rhyw ofid amhendant wedi ymdreiddio i’m meddwl. Nid gofid personol, ond rhywbeth mwy cyffredinol, fel rhyw niwl trwchus sy wedi setlo fel melltith ar y wlad a’r byd, ac sy’n peidio â chael ei symud gan…
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A playing card with feeling
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…
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Battle of the buildings
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…
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Jim Crace’s angels
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)…
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Cynwrig’s stone foot
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…