Following the 70th anniversary of the Battle of El Alamein, the vivid account of the life of Second World War soldier Elfed Davies (1919-2002) from Cardiganshire and his time as a young soldier in the North African Campaign has been published in a new book, called Salem Soldier. Salem Soldier is a tale of two halves, as it is the story of a father and son, Elfed and Brian Davies, both raised in the tranquillity of north Cardiganshire hamlets, Salem and Penrhyn-coch. They lived dramatically different lives: Elfed Davies recalls his journey from north Cardiganshire to the ravages...

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A book of obituaries has been published to celebrate the lives of 75 eminent Welsh people who have contributed significantly to life in Wales during the last few decades. An essential supplement to any history of modern Wales, Welsh Lives: Gone but not forgotten consists of obituaries written by the prolific Meic Stephens that first appeared, for the most part, in the pages of The Independent between 1999 and 2012. Obituaries are about life, not death, says Meic Stephens. I think that the title, Welsh Lives: Gone but not Forgotten, sums up what I want to convey: that the people...

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Fresh from the success of his first novel, Ctrl-Alt-Delete, Welsh writer Dave Lewis has returned to poetry for his sixth book Haiku , and produced a fine collection of over 300 modern verses. The book was written over the last few years and is split into four sections under the headings Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter. Reviews "Dave Lewis is a unique voice in the poetry world. His new collection is filled with a range of vivid, often quirky, word pictures. He is adept at making every word count. Despite its brevity, the haiku is anything but an easy option at its best, this...

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Buy ''Decades of Discovery'' here This week, at Tonyrefail library, Y Lolfa published the autobiography of Margaret Maund. Her twenties was spent deep in the jungle of central Africa; then she became one of the first women to be ordained as a priest in Wales and also the proud owner of several brightly-coloured Robin Reliants! Margaret Maund has had quite an extraordinary life. Born in the south Wales valleys, she trained as a nurse and midwife and spent three years working in war-torn central Africa in the late 1960s. Many years later she became an Anglican priest,...

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Howard Marks discovers his roots and embraces Wales and Welsh culture in new book Immortalised for his criminal activities, Howard Marks public life story is a heady mix of fact and fiction that begins and ends with his career as one of the most sophisticated drug barons of all times. In his new book Two Dragons , Howard Marks pulls together, for the first time, the stories from his life that show the private quest he embarked upon following a chance conversation with a black American in prison for murder. It's an account of a personal journey that took him back to his Welsh...

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The Ladies of Blaenwern recounts the way in which the University of Wales sold off an internationally renowned cob stud which had been bequeathed to them in the 1980s. It is also the story of three ladies who formed a musical partnership called The Dorian Trio in the early twentieth century. Generations of children who were brought up in Wales in the 1930s, 40s and 50s knew of the Trio who travelled around schools performing and educating. They worked at University College of North Wales for ten years and later at Aberystwyth, travelling around south Wales giving concerts. However, by...

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With the experiences of two families giving up their home comforts to travel back to 1890s Blaenavon about to hit our television screens this month, it is timely that stars of a previous reality show reflect on their experiences during, and since the time they spent in the 1927 Coal House. Cerdin and Debra Griffiths and the family are back to tell us about how life has been for them since their nationwide TV exposure. Life in the Coal House reminds us of those pleasant and not so pleasant experiences and contains the family’s personal photographs. The experience certainly changed...

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World Mental Health Day will be celebrated at the Wales Millennium Centre this year with the launch of a novel Bamboo Grove , set in Bangkok, with a bipolar teenager as its main character. Manic depressive author Romy Wood looks at the extremes of life in the Far East through the eyes of Jessica, a young woman who also has the disorder. Precarious at the best of times and vulnerable to exotic job offers, Jessica meets Moses, a pseudo-Buddhist monk and Pippa, a Romanian illegal immigrant, and is sent to Bangkok by a quixotic pair of young businessmen. All become...

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North Shields-born and bred Tony Bianchi is of Italian descent but learnt Welsh so well that he took the major Fiction prize in Welsh, the Daniel Owen Memorial Prize, in 2007, as well as being nominated twice over for the Welsh Book of the Year for his novels in the language. He also taught himself the strict poetic metres and was the 2007 judge for Welsh entries of the Ireland-based International Poetry Competition, File Filochta, which he himself won in 2004. The son of a policeman, he spent most of his career as Literature Director at the Arts Council of Wales....

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Pritchards Nose , the debut novel of Sam Adams, tells the tale of a man who lost his nose in strange circumstances. Intrigued by the mysterious legend of the man with a hole where his nose should be, Martin, a literary researcher, goes on the trail of a long-lost manuscript belonging to Thomas Prichard, the 19th century author of the tales of the Welsh highwayman, Twm Sion Cati . Woven into this literary detective story is the fictional autobiography of Prichard himself, following him from his childhood in rural Wales, along the drovers' road to London and a career on...

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Thursday 26 November sees the Cardiff launch of Y Lolfa’s first book-DVD package, at Womanby Street’s bar, Y Fuwch Goch. Multi-prize-winning TV documentary film maker Colin Thomas’ awards include three from BAFTA Cymru, as well as the Prix Europa, the Gold Award at Houston International Film Festival, and the Jury Award at the Celtic Film and TV Festival. Now for the first time, his documentary Hughesovka and the New Russia , presented by Professor Gwyn Alf Williams, is available to keep. First transmitted in English to the UK network on BBC2 in 1991, the three-part series won...

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Author Alan Biltons father worked as a track walker for British Rail. The family managed without a car until he was 17, enjoying as they did free rail travel. His father loved Charlie Chaplin. Obsessions with train journeys and silent film are Alan Biltons childhood legacy, and both are crucial to his first novel, The Sleepwalkers Ball , published next week. The novel was launched in a 1950s restored railway carriage, La Charrette, the smallest cinema in Wales, at the Gower Heritage Centre. Here the author will introduce to a select audience (the cinema seats only 23 people) two...

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Wales is renowned for its sheep, male voice choirs and rugby players. In a new book published this week Aubrey Malone makes a case for the legendary status of Welsh drinkers. In the introduction to Welsh Drinkers he mentions the boozing antics of amongst others Rhys Ifans, Charlotte Church, Dai Llewellyn, Tommy Cooper and Hugh Griffiths, however the bulk of the book is dedicated to four world famous Welsh celebrities whose lives fell apart due to their addiction to alcohol. Welsh Drinkers examines how Richard Burton, Dylan Thomas, Rachel Roberts and Anthony Hopkins coped with...

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A tense political thriller about the hunting down of a wartime Nazi executioner in the Welsh countryside by, among others, a Jewish girl, is being published by Y Lolfa this week. Set in the early eighties, shortly after the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, and now published in the wake of the Israeli massacre in Gaza, it likely to prove controversial as the author is a committed Zionist. However Judith Maro, the author, who now lives in Mumbles, Swansea, insists she disagrees strongly with present Israeli policies, as do many other Jewish intellectuals. Author Judith Maro said: “I do hope...

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A Welsh author living in America was overcome by emotion twenty five years since leaving his homeland and became ludicrously patriotic, so decided to write a novel glorifying Wales. Peter Griffiths is a Welsh-speaking author from Cynheidre near Llanelli, moved to Denver, Colorado in 1972, but in the last few years has gravitated back to Wales. Peter Griffiths said: In 1990, while driving from Heathrow to Bala, climbing the Berwyn from Llangynog, I distinctly remember being moved by the grandeur, and feeling ludicrously patriotic. How could I not write a novel glorifying Wales,...

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Fatal Neglect: Who Killed Dylan Thomas? is published by Seren on November 9 2008, the 55th anniversary of the death. £9.99, ISBN 978-1-85411-480-8 It is now available from local bookstores, internet book suppliers or direct from www.seren-books.com . It will be many months before it appears in the US and other countries, so the internet and the Seren website are your best bets. ... ... From the Back Cover:- Dylan Thomas went to New York in October 1953 to perform in Under Milk Wood. Three weeks later, he was dead. This fascinating book confronts painful facts about...

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Read our interview with author Peter Luther here Cardiff author Peter Luther has just launched his second novel, The Mourning Vessels . It is loosely located in his favourite town of Tenby. The fast paced supernatural thriller is based on the machinations of a Satanic coven –The Divine Sentiment and the story follows the main character Ellen’s quest to unriddle their sinister operations and free the souls of her dead parents. Peter Luther ’s first novel Dark Covenant has already been reprinted twice by Ceredigion based publishers Y Lolfa, and earned...

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Kevin Johns is a performer, actor, pantomime dame, radio broadcaster, football fanatic and the guy with the mike at all of Swansea City’s home games. And that’s not all, as we discover in this extremely enjoyable autobiography of the all-round entertainer, co-written by Peter Read. Growing up in the Plasmarl area of Swansea in the 1960s, Johns longed to be an entertainer from an early age. After a religious experience at secondary school, his life became a battle between football and religion, the secular and the spiritual. The book tells of how he has managed to combine several...

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There have been many books written on Welsh history over the years, but for a concise overview of the subject, A Brief History of Wales will be hard to beat. Author Gerald Morgan says he appreciated “the impossibility of the task… a history of Wales in twenty thousand words! But fools rush in…” However, Morgan has proved himself more than equal to the challenge by writing a gripping narrative of conquest, resistance and survival. This should come as no great surprise, since he is a respected historian and teacher who admits he has “been in love with the history of Wales since I...

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Prolific historian Gerald Morgan’s latest work, Castles In Wales , will be gratefully received by tourists, amateur historians and castle enthusiasts alike. Rather than producing yet another coffee-table-sized tome or in-depth academic study, Morgan has written a practical, pocket-sized, comprehensive guide designed to make sense of the bewildering array of castles Wales has on offer – from the impregnable edifices of the Welsh princes situated high on craggy hilltops to Edward I’s ‘iron ring’ of magnificent fortresses designed to intimidate the rebels of Gwynedd. The author has...

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