AmeriCymru: We learn from your biography that you have written more than 40 books on a wide range of topics. How do you pick your subjects?
Terry: When I returned to Wales to live, I could find no books to tell my children why I felt Welsh – anything to instil pride in them. I tried to stimulate interest in a Welsh encyclopaedia, with no response, so I wrote An A-Z of Wales and the Welsh, which copied extensively by authors in following years. It was a major problem, taking over 4 years to get it published, so it was outdated and also unknowingly bowdlerised. I had been a management consultant in the production industry, and a marketing director of plcs, so I realised that publishing was not rocket science.
Keeping my normal jobs as a university lecturer and management consultant, I also began a small publishing company, Glyndwr Publishing, to publish my books and those of other Welshmen who could not get great non-fiction books upon Wales published. I’m quite proud of what I achieved, but now concentrate upon writing only, as time is running out and there’s so much to write about. I’m 67, and I want to write another 16-17 books, including a definitive one on Arthur, but that is so convoluted that it’ll take at least two years, although I have almost all the materials.
AmeriCymru: Looking through your titles it would certainly appear that Welsh history and culture have provided your main focus. Would you agree?
Terry: Definitely – most people do not know that British history was rewritten by Bishop Stubbs to bolster the Hanover dynasty. George I was 58 th in line to the throne and was a princeling from a tiny country the size of the Isle of Wight. History was altered to take out the native Christian Britons and define its success as the greatest empire the world has seen as stemming from the pagan Germanic invasion of the Angles, Saxons, Jutes etc.
Today’s history taught in schools and colleges reflects this opinion that there was nothing except the Romans and Anglo-Saxons before the Norman invasion. Even in Wales, there is no history taught about the British, i.e. Welsh people. Much of the scorn for Iolo Morganwg stems from people being taught the Angle, i.e. English version of history. Welsh academics follow an out-dated English propaganda version of history. Our politicians follow the same line – it’s almost as if we should be grateful to the English for ‘civilizing’ us, whereas the reality is the reverse. We had over a thousand saints before they were even Christianised.
AmeriCymru: In the foreword to ''The Welsh: A Biography'' you state that the book is ''....a deliberate attempt to rewrite our national history''. Why in your opinion has it been necessary to do this?
Terry: As I noted in your last question, historians are too afraid to upset the apple cart. They are also often not taught to see the big picture. Most academics, whether in engineering, physics, English or history, are specialists in their subject areas, but it normally takes people from outside a specialism to make breakthroughs or see something differently. My book Breverton’s Encyclopaedia of Inventions showed that it was thinkers, not academics, who changed society.
History across the world is written by the conquerors. Colonial nations like Wales are taught to accept a different version of history to the historical truth. France and England have very different historical books upon the relations between those countries. The English people think that they always beat the French in battle but the reverse is true. The French people believe in the myth of the Resistance. The French army we rescued at Dunkirk asked to be sent back home and was repatriated as no threat to the Germans, whereas the Poles who managed to escape fought for Britain throughout the war. The French believe that de Gaulle actually achieved something during the war. History is stranger the more you look into it. If you start by questioning everything, you thankfully get some very different conclusions. It helps that I’m reasonably good at languages and look at events from other nations’ perspectives.
AmeriCymru: You published ''Breverton''s Complete Herbal'' in 2011. Can you introduce this remarkable resource for our readers?
Terry: I wanted to find a publisher for my newly translated and unexpurgated ‘The Physicians of Myddfai’, but had no joy and ended up doing it through an associated company of Cambria Magazine. In the research, I discovered that Culpeper’s 17 th century Herbal had never been out of print, but also had never been updated. Culpeper was an outsider, and I came to identify with him.
He wanted to demystify medicine, and take it out of the hands of expensive doctors, pharmacists and assorted quacks and give it back to the people. He therefore told people all the plant remedies that were used, and where to find the herbs growing. Herbal remedies have been used for millennia, and those in use had often been developed by the Greeks, Arabs or Romans. It is a fascinating area, and there is an interesting interface with modern drug companies.
Many herbal remedies actually work with no side effects, but some have been attacked in the press following ‘scientific evidence’ from researchers in the pay of the drug multinationals. It was a really, really enjoyable project. Also in the other book on the 12 th century Myddfai doctors at the court of Rhys Grug of Dinefwr, I found their descendants still practising medicine, including an oncology professor in Seattle! What other country can boast a line of 800 years of doctors in one family? And the original was expurgated – there are over 1000 remedies, but around 40 dealing with sexual diseases were omitted from the last translation in 1861.
AmeriCymru: One of your books is a biography of renowned Welsh pirate Black Bart - ''Black Bart Roberts: The Greatest Pirate of Them All''. In what sense was Black Bart the greatest pirate of them all?
Terry: In researching my 100 Great Welshmen, I came across John Callice of Tintern, who was the most well-known pirate of Elizabethan times, but with friends at court. I knew that in the next century, Admiral Sir Henry Morgan was the most successful privateer in history, but in the following century I came across the most astounding character. When we think of pirates we think of Captain Kidd and Blackbeard, but these were minor league. John Robert, aka Black Bart Roberts of Casnewydd Bach, Pembrokeshire, was captured by a fellow Welshman, the remarkable Howell Davis.
When Davis was killed, Roberts was elected captain by the senior crew, the ‘House of Lords’. He almost brought transatlantic shipping to a halt. He attacked heavily-armed French, Portuguese, English and Spanish naval vessels, whereas other pirate captains would flee. He took the King of Portugal’s treasure ship and dressed in scarlet silks for battle. Black Bart took over 400 ships in his short career. A teetotaller, he was trapped in his role, and he was the first to say ‘a short life and a merry one shall be my motto.’ His crews featured in the greatest pirate trial of all time, and in my researches I found that Israel Hands, one of Blackbeard’s crew, sailed with Black Bart before being hung in chains with the other senior crew members. Roberts was a star, worthy of a film.
AmeriCymru: You have also compiled a Pirate dictionary. Can you give us a few colourful samples of the vernacular?
Terry: The version in England is called The Pirate Handbook and is much longer, and is full of colourful nautical terms. There are hundreds of vernacular phrases from the seas in common usage, but the one I most enjoyed discovering was ‘wanker’. Dictionaries tells us that this is a fairly modern term of abuse, but the privateer Basil Ringrose wrote a journal around 1680, saying that Spanish prisoners were known as wankers. I believe that it is because so many of them were named Juan-Carlos, and it was a shortening of those Christian names. Thus the ship’s hold was full of Juan-Carloses, over time becoming wankers. You heard it here first…
AmeriCymru: You have been to the States a few times in the past to speak at NAFOW. Care to comment on those visits?
Terry: They are brilliant affairs, but celebrate some sort of myth of what Wales was, rather than how it is now. The nation is on its knees with the lowest socio-economic indicators in Europe. I love the concept of NAFOW, but it is fairly tragic that the overwhelming number of people attending are white-haired like myself.
We have a problem across the Western world in that younger people are less and less literate. They have too many distractions to bother with reading, history, heritage and culture. Of course, I’d be the same if I was their generation, constantly scanning my mobile phone or Facebook or Twitter, reading and sending vacuous messages. People of my age grew up with books as their only major form of entertainment. My parents had a TV when I went to university, and it never featured in my life as a source of entertainment until my 30’s. Now people have the latest electronic gadgets, but I got rid of my mobile phone and have no need of any technology except an old television, a landline, fridge-freezer and a 3-year-old laptop computer. I am thought primitive because I do not wish to replace my car, clothes or equipment when there is nothing wrong with them.
I fear for the culture of Wales here in Wales, let alone in North America. The language is dying – forget what Welsh politicians say, they are completely wrong. I moved from Glamorgan to the Ceredigion-Carmarthen border as it was one of the last bastions of the language, but it’s virtually gone here. It is the same across Wales – you hear more foreign voices than Welsh language or accents. The powers-that-be think that because Welsh is taught in schools, it is being used in real life, but in-migration has seen it off. In my country lane only 6 of 38 inhabitants are Welsh, and it’s the same across Wales. 90% of population growth for many years has been from outside Wales, but no-one will speak out.
The non-Welsh population, if you define being Welsh as having Welsh grandparents, is probably over 50%, and growing. The identity of Wales has been lost in my lifetime – R.S. Thomas saw it coming in his poetry. It is really, really sad. Luckily I can speak out about it because I have no need of honours, political advancement or academic preferment. Unluckily, I am powerless to affect anything.
AmeriCymru: What are you reading at the moment? Any recommendations?
Terry: I only read for researching books, so my reading list would be quite boring… I have a load of books on the Plantagenets to work through. My favourite poet is Idris Davies, who was very highly rated by T.S. Eliot – his life and work is an example to everyone. His collected poems are utterly brilliant, and define the Great Depression in the mining valleys. Everyone Welsh should read them. To be honest I enjoy reference books – if I see a different bird or plant or visit a new place, I have to find out about them – I don’t like not knowing about things.
AmeriCymru: What''s next for Terry Breverton? Any new books in the pipeline?
Terry: There is a semi-hagiographical process going on since they found Richard III’s bones, with cathedrals squabbling for his relics, presumably to attract tourist income. For some reason he has been moved from the status of ‘black king’ to ‘white king’ by recent historical writers. My book Richard III – the King in the Carpark will put him back where he should be, and incidentally promote the misunderstood Henry Tudor, whose army killed Richard at Bosworth. After that I’m doing a history of Welsh rugby. I played until I was 41, and still miss it, but the modern version is far more savage and less spectator and participant-friendly unfortunately.
I’m really tempted to walk the Offa’s Dyke Path staying at pubs, writing about the history of the area, but it would be too expensive in alcohol costs. Also the route of Henry VII from Pembroke to Bosworth – 200 miles – would be a good walk that could be developed for tourism, but I need to find suitable footpaths.
I’d like to write a book upon the stories of the white Indians – basically because there’s a lot of eye-witness accounts of Welsh-speaking Indians which could just possibly be related to Madoc ab Owain Gwynedd. I’m rewriting my The Book of Welsh Saints and The Journal of Lewellin Penrose as well. The problem is that I live on an old farmhouse in the Teifi Valley and it constantly needs work, along with the garden. There aren’t enough hours in the day.
AmeriCymru: Any final message for the readers and members of AmeriCymru?
Terry: Wales is being seriously let down by its elected representatives. Education, health and housing are poor and there are no job prospects in the private sector. No-one speaks for the Welsh people, certainly not Plaid Cymru, or Plaid Gwynt as they have come to be known. Tourism is our only remaining industry, not very successful compared to Scotland or Ireland, and the faceless authorities are even trying to wreck that. I tried to get a version of the following article in the press, with no results, even as a truncated letter:
THE WIND FOLLIES OF WALES
( Click above to read the statement on the AmeriCymru Forum )
