Jen Wilson introduces her book, Freedom Music: Wales, Emancipation and Jazz 1850-1950 This book was a slow burn, probably from that day in school when the piano lid was slammed down by the deputy head, near-missing my fingers, all for ‘lowering the decorum of the whole school’ etc. I was 14, and the piano remained
A new series from the University of Wales Press, introduced by series editors Dr Diane Heath and Dr Victoria Blud. Animals are good to think with, wrote Claude Lévi-Strauss, and ‘Medieval Animals’ is designed to enable the curious reader to do just that. The aim of this series is to promote work that challenges preconceptions about
Luci Attala introduces How Water Makes Us Human: Engagements with the Materiality of Water, the first book in the Materialities in Anthropology and Archaeology series. I am not a great water drinker; I prefer to get into it. As I have grown older it is the quietness that is created by going deep under the water that
David Stephenson introduces Medieval Wales c.1050-1332: Centuries of Ambiguity. Long after it was published in 1911, Sir John Edward Lloyd’s History of Wales from the Earliest Times to the Edwardian Conquest remained the most influential book on the medieval centuries in Wales. The picture painted by Lloyd was in essence simple: a succession of great Welsh
David Callander introduces Dissonant Neighbours: Narrative Progress in Early Welsh and English Poetry. Scholars in recent years have shown an increased and more explicit interest in medieval multilingualism. The study of codices and texts in multiple languages, quite a norm for much of the medieval period, has led to exciting new work and opened up fresh avenues
Gethin Matthews introduces Having a Go at the Kaiser: A Welsh Family at War, which has been nominated for Wales Book of the Year 2019. The book ‘Having a Go at the Kaiser’: A Welsh Family at War was launched at an event in Mynyddbach chapel, north Swansea, on 8 November 2018. It is based
The University of Wales Press is delighted to receive two nominations for Wales Book of the Year 2019. Congratulations to Gethin Matthews and Lisa Sheppard, whose books have been shortlisted in the Creative Non-fiction category. Having a Go at the Kaiser: A Welsh Family at War by Gethin Matthews This book is based on more
Elizabeth Neiman introduces her new book, Minerva’s Gothics: The Politics and Poetics of Romantic Exchange, 1780-1820. Between 1790 and 1820, William Lane’s London printing press Minerva published an unprecedented number of novels, many by obscure female authors. Because Minerva novels catered to the day’s fashion for sentimental themes and Gothic romance, they were and still are
John Baylis introduces his new book, Wales and the Bomb: The Role of Welsh Scientists and Engineers in the British Nuclear Programme. The history of the British nuclear weapons programme from the Second World War onwards is now well known. We also know quite a lot about some of the central figures, like William Penney, involved
Daniel McCann introduces his new book, Soul-Health: Therapeutic Reading in Later Medieval England. The connection between reading and healing has a history far deeper and far darker than modern ‘bibliotherapeutics’ would lead us to believe. While you don’t have to look far to find accounts of ‘consoling fictions’ offering mental and physical health, looking a
Kathleen Hudson introduces her new book, Servants and the Gothic, 1764-1831: A half-told tale. In William Godwin’s 1794 novel Things as they are, or The Adventures of Caleb Williams, servant protagonist Caleb recounts a story of a complicated, often antagonist employer-employee relationship as a means of preventing the circulation of a future ‘half-told and mangled tale’.
Rhiannon Ifans introduces her new book, Red Hearts and Roses? Welsh Valentine Songs and Poems. Who was Saint Valentine, the saint who gave his name to the festival of lovers? Where do red hearts and roses fit in? Or do they? This volume is a lively introduction to a little known subject, the celebration of Saint
