A Gift of Sunlight: The fortune and quest of the Davies sisters of Llandinam , written by Trevor Fishlock, gives a voice to the shy and wealthy sisters and is the first full telling of an extraordinary story of love and courage.  

The book will be launched on Sunday, 25 May at 11.30am at Llwyfan Cymru – Wales Stage, the Hay Festival.

Together, Gwendoline Davies and Margaret Davies amassed one of the greatest art collections of the twentieth century. Between them, they bequeathed 260 works to the National Museum of Wales.

Author Trevor Fishlock was commissioned by the Gwendoline and Margaret Davies Trust to write the book and he explains how he came to learn more about these remarkable sisters:

“I was in my twenties when I first saw the Davies sisters’ collection of art in Cardiff. It was a revelation. I began to see that Gwendoline and Margaret Davies were at the heart of a great story of art, wealth and love.”

“Years later, working on a television programme about them, I began to know more. The sisters had non-speaking parts – they were distant figures, like flowers in the garden. They really were as shy as everyone described them.

They were also the richest unmarried young women in Britain. Where, people asked, and still ask, did their fortune come from?

The answer is at the heart of an extraordinary Welsh family saga. The sisters’ grandfather, David Davies, uneducated son of poor hill farmers in mid-Wales, struck it rich, first in railway building, then as a Rhondda coal pioneer – a Victorian hero of Wales.”

The sisters’ upbringing instilled in them a strict Calvinistic Methodist faith and, with it, an iron sense of social responsibility and philanthropy. They supported great causes, health, education and culture and their gift to the people of Wales was an art collection to rival any in Europe.  

“In this volume the unique and thrilling story of the Davies sisters of Llandinam is told in its entirety for the first time. It is a story of love and courage. Despite their shyness and their abundance of wealth, the sisters went bravely to war, gave generously to charity and created for their country a celebrated treasury of captivating and immortal paintings and sculptures. The book is packed with splendid pictures and draws on personal papers to reveal new information about unexpected aspects of the sisters’ story, information that will prove an eye-opener to all,” says a spokesman on behalf of the Gwendoline and Margaret Davies Trust.

Bringing Art to Wales: The Davies Sisters , presented by Trevor Fishlock, will be shown on BBC TWO Wales , Saturday 24 May at 7.30pm .

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Trevor Fishlock is a writer and broadcaster who reported as a foreign correspondent from more than seventy countries for The Times and The Daily Telegraph. He is the author of books on Wales, India, Russia, America and on nineteenth-century exploration, and has written and  presented more than one hundred and fifty television programmes about life and history in Wales .

A Gift of Sunlight will be available from

all good bookshops and online retailers

For further information about the event at the Hay Festival, please visit hayfestival.org/programme

For more information, please visit www.gomer.co.uk