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 […]
Owen Glynne Jones on Cader Idris
Owen Glynne Jones, everyone agreed, was the outstanding rock climber of his age. Born in London in 1867 of Welsh-speaking parents and educated in science and engineering, he made his name by pioneering new routes in the English Lake District, and from 1891 he became internationally famous for his climbs in the Alps. A natural […]
The courage of Thomas Thrush
Less than four miles from Kilburn, my brother’s home in north Yorkshire till his death last November, is the village of Sutton-under-Whitestonecliffe. It sits at the foot of the steep escarpment known as Sutton Bank, on the main road between Thirsk and Scarborough. Sutton was the home in the 1820s of a remarkable but little-known […]
‘Mwy o sgwennwrs na darllenwrs’: yr argyfwng geiriau
Yn ei nofel ddeifiol newydd Hunllef Nadolig Eben Parri mae Arwel Vittle yn anelu ei arfau dychanol at dargedau niferus yn y Gymru gyfoes. Un yw pobl sy’n ysgrifennu a chyhoeddi. Mae bron pob grŵp yn ei chael hi’n arw gan ‘Ysbryd Cymru Sydd’: cofiannau (‘gormod ohonyn nhw’), academyddion (‘digon o ddadansoddi a gor-ddadansoddi ôl-drefedigaethol […]