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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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Carys Evans and her women
Just over a year since her last solo show in Swansea Carys Evans has another, in the Kooywood Gallery in Cardiff. Again there are around forty paintings – large and small, on canvas and board, in oils, mixed media and…
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Rachel Whiteread and Walter Sickert
It might be a sign of increasing age, but these days I prefer the quieter Tate Britain to the glitz and gargantuism of Tate Modern. Last weekend we went there early to see the retrospective of the sculptor Rachel Whiteread. …
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Dillad dychmygol Brexit
Yn y stori draddodiadol a addaswyd gan Hans Christian Andersen yn 1837, mae pawb yn y ddinas yn llygadrythu ar ddillad newydd yr Ymerawdwr – y gair yw eu bod yn anweledig ond i bobl dwp – nes bod bachgen…
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Boy in a window
An old, long-abandoned factory in Swansea’s Strand. It has two storeys, a stone wall at its base and a corrugated roof. Below, the windows are boarded or blacked out. Upstairs, where ragged glass hangs in the smashed panes, one window…
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William Jones, Glynneath, 100 years on
Almost exactly 100 years ago, at 6:25am on 25 October 1917, a terrible thing was done to a young man from Glynneath named William Jones. A group of soldiers from the Worcestershire Regiment formed a firing squad and shot him…