Naivety of an online evangelist
Looking back over a career isn’t something I waste time much on. But sometimes my mind drifts back. And sometimes I wonder at how I spent so much time and effort, all those years ago, in the aid of a cause that would seem to have ended so badly. I was one of many who […]
Posteri’r Eisteddfod
Un o draddodiadau Eisteddfod Genedlaethol Cymru sy wedi mynd ar goll yw’r arfer o ddylunio a chyhoeddi poster arbennig i hysbysebu’r ŵyl. Yn y degawdau cyntaf o’r ugeinfed ganrif tyfodd yr arfer, ac weithiau gwahoddwyd artistiaid Cymreig o fri i greu delweddau i’r posteri. Dechreuodd y traddodiad cyn y Rhyfel Byd Cyntaf. Yn Eisteddfod Genedlaethol […]
A new Thrasymachus
What is justice? For the current President of the United States of America, the answer to that question is directly and exclusively linked to another – who holds power over others? In his White House dialogue with Volodymir Zelinskyy on 28 February, Donald Trump told him ‘you don’t have the cards right now’. It follows […]
Kenneth Rowntree paints Wales
In 1940 the government commissioned around sixty artists to record local scenes all over Britain, in order to capture a visual record of the country’s buildings and landscapes before they were transformed by the effects and aftereffects of war. The scheme, labelled ‘Recording Britain’, became a home equivalent of the war artists scheme set up […]
In praise of Maesteg
The last deep coal mine in the Llynfi valley, St John’s Colliery, just east of Maesteg, closed in 1985, at the end of Margaret Thatcher’s war against the miners. At its peak it employed nearly 1,500 men. There’s been no other source of work of comparable size in the area since – the local paper […]
Nelan a Bo
Nelan a Bo yw trydedd nofel Angharad Price. Ynddi mae’n mynd nôl i’w chartref gyntaf, Rhos Chwilog, ar bwys pentref Bethel yn Arfon. Llecyn bach iawn – rhaid troi at y map manylaf er mwyn rhoi’ch bys arno – ond, efallai yn union oherwydd hynny, lle arbennig yn hanes yr awdur, fel esboniodd hi mewn […]
Two versions of Ceridwen
Christopher Williams is little known today outside his home town of Maesteg, but in his heyday – he was born in 1873 and died in 1934 – he was regarded as the outstanding painter of Wales. He earned his living mainly by painting portraits. Among his subjects were many of the Welsh public figures of […]
‘Deud llai’: troli Tesco ac un esgid damp
deud llai (Barddas, 2024) yw’r trydydd casgliad o gerddi i’w gyhoeddi gan Dafydd John Pritchard. Roedd yr ail, Lôn fain (2013), dipyn yn llai fel llyfr corfforol na’r cyntaf, Dim ond deud (2006), ac mae’r gyfrol newydd yn llai byth. Bydd yn ffitio’n i mewn i boced fach eich siaced heb drafferth. Yn yr un […]
‘No Welsh art’
Peter Lord’s exhibition ‘Dim Celf Cymreig / No Welsh Art’ fills the whole of the largest exhibition space in Wales, the Gregynog Gallery in the National Library. It needs such a big space because Peter’s personal gallery, built up over forty years of collecting, is unrivalled in size and scope among private collections of Welsh […]
Welcome back, Benito
On 20 January Donald Trump, having been sworn in at the start of his second term as US President, outlined in his acceptance speech his mission for the next four years. Simply, he would put America first. He blamed ‘the radical and corrupt establishment has extracted power and wealth from our citizens’ for the broken […]