Orwell’s toads
On 12 April 1946 the magazine Tribune published a short piece by George Orwell entitled Some thoughts on the common toad. It’s not perhaps his most original essay – its central theme is the coming of spring, and how ubiquitous it is, even in the centre of a large city like London – but it […]
A waxwork opens an embassy
Like many people – or at least like many non-Londoners – I was only dimly aware that the American government was building a new UK embassy in London, when Mr Donald J Trump kindly drew our attention to its imminent opening. According to a recent tweet it seems Mr Trump was planning to come and […]
Morfydd Llwyn Owen a Ruth Herbert Lewis
Faint o bobl sy’n ymwybodol bod un o’r mynwentydd gorau yng Nghymru i’w gweld oddi ar Newton Road, Ystumllwynarth? Ac o’r rheiny, faint sy’n gyfarwydd â’r gofeb urddasol sy’n llechu mewn cornel anghysbell o’r fynwent, fel na fyddai ymwelydd sy’n troedio’r llwybrau yn sylwi arno? Cyfeirio ydw i at fedd y gyfansoddwraig ifanc Morfydd Llwyn […]
Philip Pullman and the revival of fascism
One of the sweetest memories of reading books to our daughters when they were young was narrating Philip Pullman’s ‘His dark materials trilogy’ to E. in the 1990s, not long after the books were published. One of them, Northern lights, carries a message to E. from the author on its title page. Sometimes I’d continue […]
Walking to meet heroes
In October 1705 Johann Sebastian Bach set out on foot on a journey of 260 miles. He was twenty years old. He’d recently been in a brawl with a musician he’d insulted in the market place of his home town of Arnstadt in Thuringia, central Germany. The church authorities who employed him as organist in […]
Celebrating our research collections
The text of a talk given in Taliesin, Swansea University on 11 December 2017 to mark the 80th birthday of the 1937 Library. The talk was supported by Swansea University, the Learned Society of Wales and the Royal Institution of South Wales. Diolch yn fawr am y gwahoddiad i siarad – y tro cyntaf imi […]
Brasil: dwy long, dau fardd
Un o’r cyfnodau allweddol ym mywyd a barddoniaeth T.H. Parry-Williams oedd ei fordaith, ar ei ben i hun, i dde America yn 1925. Ar y pryd bu cryn ansicrwydd, nid y lleiaf ar ran y bardd ei hun, am y rheswm pam penderfynodd adael Cymru a’i deulu yn Rhyd-ddu – roedd ei dad mewn anhwylder […]
A biodiversity lesson from India
We tread softly behind our guide, taking care not to make the dry leaves crackle and alarm the birds around the Chambal Lodge estate. He points upwards, to a branch where owls are asleep (it’s mid-afternoon, and we’re surprised to see owls at all). A large Scops owl sits stock still, and stares at us […]
Mary Lloyd Jones
Mary Lloyd Jones has been exhibiting her paintings since the 1960s. She’s a consistent and prolific artist, and it can seem hard to find new things to say about her work – especially since she’s written and spoken often about it herself (many others have too, including Ann Price-Owen, Ceridwen Lloyd Morgan and Iwan Bala). […]
Sitting for Bernard
For over forty years, and with increased energy since 1990, Bernard Mitchell has been collecting people. The people are artists and writers working in Wales, and his means of collecting them is the camera lens. Many people have seen parts of his great project, the Wales Arts Archive, over the years. In the 1990s the […]