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The big BBC series Civilisations has come to an end. It was designed as a remake of – and a challenge to – the famous Kenneth Clark series Civilisation, first shown in 1969. The challenge was directly reflected in the…
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Hints and helps for every-day emergencies
On the book table in the RISW coffee morning I find a drab, battered paperback. It looks much older than the other books around it. The faded cover has three overlapping circular pictures featuring a housewife, a small child and…
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Helen Dunmore’s Catullus
When Helen Dunmore died at the age of 64 in June 2017 her readers mourned the loss of one of most sensitive and versatile writers of recent years. Many of them will have known her for the novels, short stories…
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Who is the happiest of us all?
The answer, of course, is Finland. Cris Dafis, in this week’s Golwg, reminded us about the World Economic Forum’s recent report on the ‘happiness’ of people living in individual countries. In this country we still judge national success in traditional,…
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On the naming of bridges
Unsurprisingly the announcement this week by Alun Cairns, Secretary of State for Wales, that the Second Severn Crossing is to be renamed the ‘Prince of Wales Bridge’ has caused uproar. Perhaps it was intended to. Some have even suggested that…
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Men come together to make a man
I was wandering absently through the galleries of the Glynn Vivian the other day, trying, unsuccessfully, to remember what the Welsh word for ‘unflattering’ might be, when I stopped suddenly in front of a Japanese print. It was in one…
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Iaith a Brecsit
Er Mehefin 2016 mae llawer o bobl yn cynnig llawer o resymau er mwyn ceisio esbonio pam dewisodd mwyafrif o bleidleiswyr Prydeinig i adael yr Undeb Ewropeaidd. Rhesymau economaidd – yr awydd i gadw swyddi a chodi cyflogau, i sicrhau…
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Wales and Brexit, by Emyr Lewis
In this guest blog the lawyer and poet Emyr Lewis considers some of the complex questions, constitutional and legal, economic and cultural, that arise for Wales from the UK’s decision to leave the European Union. The text was originally given…
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Frank Brangwyn’s British Empire Panels
1 Introduction Most Swansea people are familiar with the British Empire Panels. Many sitting through a dull patch in a concert in the Brangwyn Hall will have turned to ponder Frank Brangwyn’s enormous work. In a few months’ time the…
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A Pointless trip
1 M4 The thermometer’s well below zero, but we’re bowling happily along, in light traffic. Apocalyptic language in the news and weather reports – ‘Beast from the East’, amber warnings, trains cancelled before a flake has fallen – suggests…