Llanerch Press

Being a story of the first Eisteddfod as told by the people of the court.

It is Christmas 1176 at the Court of the Lord Rhys in Cardigan Castle, preparations are under way for one of the most important events in Welsh History - a contest of Bards and Musicians, later known as the First Eisteddfod.
Walter Map, envoy to King Henry II is in attendance, and invites three of the people closest to the Lord Rhys to talk to him of their life and the pending contest. This they do, each throwing a new li.......

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This is an unusual story. Written in twelfth-century France, it puts a wide range of characters on stage, from a duke of extreme - not to say crazy - nobility to a mere juggler, Daurel, who displays great personal heroism as well as musical and acrobatic talent. We also meet the Emperor Charlemagne in one of his less loveable moods, an enchanting baby who chuckles his way through the book, a noble Emir with his delightful family, a dastardly murderer who at last gets his comeuppance, and a noble.......

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Thomas Love Peacock records in his diary for August 6, 1818: "Could not read or work for scheming my romance - rivers, castles, forests, abbeys, monks, maids, kings and banditti dancing before me like a masked ball." On November 29, he describes his work to shelley as "a comic romance of the twelfth century, which I shall make the vehicle of much oblique satire on all the oppressions that are done under the sun." But Peacock's tale is the concentration of the love of sylvan nature fostered by ye.......

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The Reverend H. J. Whitfeld visited the Scilly Isles in the middle of the nineteenth century when the art of story-telling was still alive.

As he says in his preface "I came for two or three weeks, and stayed three months. The beauty of the Islands, and the kindness I received at all hands, made those three months the happiest I ever spent in my life. I have, in this work, attempted some return - though a poor one - for the pleasure I enjoyed; relating only what came under my own observation........

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Translation into blank verse, introduction and notes by Janet Shirley. Highly commended and first runner-up for the 1998 European Poetry in Translation prize. Accessible and accurate. Typeset by the Book House, Ravenstonedale. Map by Vivien McKay.

The Old French original

A famous poem, which everybody 'knows' but hasn't read. Incidentally no one in the Middle Ages would have read it either. They would have watched and listened to it, it is a performance text - you have to imagine it put a.......

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Will Hamley is a first-time novelist whose experiences of being on the fringe of politics in South Wales in the 1950's are captured in this novel about a man facing the prospect of becoming the Labour Party candidate for an upcoming election.
Pontavon, a town which though fictional bears a remarkable resemblance to many another in the South Wales Valleys is full of characters from the reddest of red, to the weirdiest and oddest imaginable.
This is the story of one man's journey, and though it re.......

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This book recounts episodes in the life of a geologist, one Chalwyn James, an impressionable youth from the Welsh Border.

Adventures range widely over five continents. Many are set in the maelstrom of Africa at the time of "winds of change". The yarns, ranging from hilarious to poignant and dramatic, can be read and enjoyed at their face value.

But the reader will become aware that there is more to the book. For Chalwyn frankly shares a spiritual journey -"Simply told, I was trained to rap.......

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Timeless wisdom and recent science co-star in this book because, amazingly, they paint similar pictures of our world. A summary of some of the highest wisdom is laid next to science’s current understanding of the basic level of the material world to show that the views from the top and bottom agree.
Scientists have discovered that the world is built from subtle connections. Einstein described these connections as ‘spooky’. That these recent discoveries have been understood a.......

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Not since the day when St. Patrick preached his first sermon in Dichu's barn has there been any event of greater importance to Ireland than the coming of the Normans to her shores. The importance of this event was not duly recognized at the time by the Irish Annalists any more than it was perceived by the Irish Chieftains. Modern historians have thus to rely on the one hand on the writings of Giraldus Cambrensis, who was not an Irishman and not free from prejudices, and on a single Irishman, Mor.......

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In a collection of unedited odds and ends from Borrow's papers bearing upon Wales, and dating from various periods of his career, there is one insignificant looking sheet on whose backs and lines are pencilled 'The Mountain Snow'.

They are reproduced in the text, but deserve notice here because of the evidence they bring of Borrow's long continued Welsh obsession and his long practice as a Welsh translator.

Throughout his life George Borrow had a passionate interest in Wales and the Welsh.......

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