Meic Stephens, who passed away this week, made a huge and vital contribution to the development of the University of Wales Press as both an author and an editor. Along with R. Brinley Jones, he established the pioneering series ‘Writers of Wales’ in 1970, which he edited for over forty years – a period that
The University of Wales Press would like to congratulate Professor M. Wynn Thomas on winning the 2018 Wales Book of the Year Award for Creative Non-Fiction with his book, All That Is Wales: The Collected Essays of M. Wynn Thomas. The Wales Book of the Year Award is presented annually to the best Welsh-language and
Diana Wallace introduces her new book in the Writers of Wales series, Christopher Meredith. The inspiration for this book came out of a kind of joke against myself. Talking to Professor Jane Aaron, one of the editors of the Writers of Wales series, I remarked that it was surely high time for a volume in
Evan T. Jones introduces the new edited volume, The World of the Newport Medieval Ship: Trade, Politics and Shipping in the Mid-Fifteenth Century. Ships have always played a prominent role in the popular imagination, and not just of seafaring communities. From the Ancient world to modern times, ships were the largest, most expensive and most
Lisa Lewis introduces Performing Wales: People: Memory and Place. Performing Wales: People, Memory and Place, begins from the premise that culture can be analysed in terms of performance, and focuses on four distinct areas of Welsh culture – Museum, Heritage, Festival and Theatre – in which performance helps to sustain specific relationships between people, memory
Patrick B. Sharp introduces Darwinian Feminism and Early Science Fiction: Angels, Amazons, and Women. Despite all the work that has been done on women’s SF over the past two decades, I still hear people at conferences state with confidence that women didn’t publish – or were excluded from publishing – in SF magazines before the Second World
On the fiftieth anniversary of May ’68, Chris Reynolds introduces his book Memories of May ’68: France’s Convenient Consensus. The commemorative fervour currently sweeping France on the topic of mai 68 is further confirmation of the thesis set out in Memories of May ’68: France’s Convenient Consensus. In it, I outline and analyse the role the
Laura Wainwright introduces her new book, New Territories in Modernism: Anglophone Welsh Writing, 1930-1949. In the early decades of the twentieth century, Modernist writers and artists sought to represent and respond to the modern world in myriad experimental and ground-breaking ways. In recent years, Modernist studies have opened up as critics have increasingly looked beyond the
Russell Davies introduces his new book, Sex, Sects and Society: ‘Pain and Pleasure’: A Social History of Wales and the Welsh, 1870-1945 Despite the hardship and hardscrabble existences endured by many, over the period 1870–1945 the life expectancy of the Welsh people doubled. The fact that death had lost the frightening immanency, which it had in
Rhianon Washington introduces The Mentor’s Companion: A Guide to Good Mentoring Practice. ‘I am here for you, I believe in you, I will not let you fail. You have the power.’ [1] Pascarelli’s powerful tenet was one of the earliest influences that inspired me to practise, study and research mentoring. I came to mentoring late, having
Emily Lyle introduces her new collection, Celtic Myth in the 21st Century: The Gods and their Stories in a Global Perspective. Antlered humans, dragons, princesses, one-eyed giants, enchanted islands, transformations, transcendent states: this is part of the stuff of Celtic myth explored in this book by experts in the field. The story-making is evident and, in
Patricia Skinner introduces her new collection, The Welsh and the Medieval World: Travel, Migration and Exile. The modern era has seen extensive studies of Welsh migration to all parts of the globe as well as immigration to Wales from Europe and beyond,[1] but these migrant histories have a long prehistory that is rather less well-known. Wales
