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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…
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Catherine Blake’s vision
Of all the astonishing visual images William Blake created, between the mid-1770s and his death in 1827, one of the most intriguing is a small sepia wash drawing (244 x 211mm) on a sheet of paper now in the Tate…
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Swansea’s rebel women
For all their strengths in the campaign to gain votes for women Emmeline and Christabel Pankhurst were by nature autocratic. In 1907 some members of their Women’s Social and Political Union took exception to their announcement that the WSPU’s annual…
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Photo of a gate
On the wall almost opposite the foot of the bed, my home for a few days last week, was a thick frame containing a mounted colour photograph. Since it was one of the few unnecessary objects in the room, and…
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Popeth yn Gymraeg, yn llythrennol
Beth sydd ei angen er mwyn cyrraedd miliwn o siaradwyr Cymraeg erbyn y flwyddyn 2050? Llawer o bethau, heb os, ond un ohonynt yw cynnydd mawr iawn yn y maint o’r deunydd yn Gymraeg sydd ar gael i bobl –…