Tag: National Library of Wales
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Kyffin in Bangor
This is the edited text of a public talk given in Bangor University on Wednesday 19 November 2025 about the eleven oil paintings by Kyffin Williams housed in the University. The talk was followed by a guided tour of the paintings. Diolch am y gwahoddiad i ddod i’r Brifysgol, a’r cyfle i siarad am artist…
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‘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…
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John Ballinger
There’s something faintly ridiculous about the phrase ‘librarian as hero’. But just occasionally librarians come along who, if not exactly heroic, at least have the capacity to astonish their successors with the number and breadth of their achievements. John Ballinger (1860-1933) was one such example. Ballinger was the Librarian of the Cardiff Free Library1 and…
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Sebon glan, sebon budr
Daeth newyddion da o Lyfrgell Genedlaethol Cymru‘r wythnos yma: bod y Llyfrgell wedi prynu un o’r ddau fersiwn gwreiddiol o’r llun dyfrlliw enwog Salem gan Sydney Curnow Vosper, cyn arwerthiant yng Nghaerdydd. Mae’n hollol briodol bod llun a ddisgrifir yn aml fel ‘eicon’ o gelf Gymreig yn cael cartref parhaol mewn sefydliad diwylliannol cenedlaethol. Fel…
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Shani Rhys James
Who is Shani Rhys James? That seems to me to be the central question underlying all of her paintings. Many of the very best of them are gathered together in Distillation, a big retrospective of her works in Oriel Gregynog at the National Library of Wales. This is quite simply an overwhelming exhibition. It’s remarkable…
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Introducing electronic legal deposit in the UK
One of the greatest of Lynne Brindley’s achievements during her twelve years in charge of the British Library was to remain steadfastly true to the Library’s aim, shared with the other UK copyright libraries, of extending the law of legal deposit to encompass publications in digital form. This article casts a retrospective and sometimes rueful…
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Tangible intangibility
‘Tangible intangibility’: the present and future of research libraries The Charles Holden Lecture, Senate House, University of London, 10 October 2013 First of all, I’d like to thank the Friends of Senate House Library for inviting me to give this year’s Holden Lecture. Charles Holden, of course, was the architect of the…