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The record of a Territorial division which served in Gallipoli. Egypt and Palestine but never on the Western Front. Towards the end of the war the divison was reorganized as an Indian Army division, retaining its number but with only one British battalion ... Read more

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Delivers 500 years in 140 pages: a brisk survey
This 140-page text, with nearly a hundred pictures, gives a brisk overview of the past five hundred years of Welsh writing in English. On pg. 16. Mathias, a noted poet and editor of the "Anglo-Welsh Review," defines his topic: "it implies no mixture of blood" but "it describes those writers who by birth or strong family derivation and residence were Welsh but who, whether from necessity or choice, wrote in English." Today, of course, anyone in Wales chooses to write in one of its two languages. In the beginning, starting in the Tudor period and increasing after the Union of 1536, when Welsh historians and poets first penned texts in English in appreciable numbers they tended to emphasize dutifully the loyalty of the Welsh to the Crown. They concocted stories assuring Britons that those enthroned at Westminster traced their roots to Brutus the Trojan and then to a Welsh monarchy.

Since then, many of those included here tended to explain their country, adopted or native, to the English. The foreignness of Wales could be mined for pathos, praise, satire, stereotype, and romance. The difficulty, as Mathias charts, lay in the fact that much of Wales over the past few centuries lay off limits to most writers in English who lived in the Principality, unless they knew both languages, and few could navigate both tongues with equal facility. Most, and this tendency perhaps grows in the past half-century, exaggerate the strangeness supposedly left in Cambria with an eye towards a London publisher, and a wider audience eager for stock characters, timeworn platitudes, and manufactured lore.

The most intriguing recent authors among admittedly a vastly disparate lot united only by geography remain such as the formidably learned but intriguingly erudite David Jones, who Mathias places within a 'second movement' along with Emyr Humphries' fiction, R.S. Thomas' verse, and perhaps the much less known poems by Raymond Garlick. These writers sought a reapproachment with the older, fading literary culture that emphasized communal duty rather than merely channelling one's muse. Mathias contrasts this disciplined mid-century faction against a 'first movement' sparked by the Joyce-like portraits of a religiously constricted and morally corrupt village that brought Caradoc Evans his first fame in 1915, and then flamed into the laments of Richard Llewelyn, Gwyn Thomas, Alexander Cordell, and others who sought in rural depictions and coal-pit descriptions a vital Welsh sensibility grounded in the peasant and the proletariat. Above all, the talented Dylan Thomas voiced his own alienation from the Welsh tradition in a language he never learned, while echoing its cadences in verbose and dazzling wordplay.

The shadow of Thomas, as Joyce for Irish writers, casts a long stretch across the second half of the past century. Mathias scans the results, and nods at Raymond Williams, John Cowper Powys, and Richard Hughes for their uses of their Welshness. He accurately observes of a less remembered author: "Menna Gallie, who wrote three spirited novels-- beginning with Strike for a Kingdom (1959) -- never adequately followed them up." (118) Gallie's predicament appears common among the later writers Mathias mentions. He finds that the most successful writing (and this book appeared in 1986) comes from criticism such as Ned Thomas' "The Welsh Extremist" and Glyn Jones' "The Dragon Has Two Tongues," as well as Raymond Williams' literary and political criticism, not to forget Kenneth Morgan and Gwyn A. Williams' histories.

In a society so anglophonic today, can the hyphen of Mathias' title still matter? He suggests that for the 'first' and 'second' movements, a counter-movement away from anglicization lingered. The 'first' usually, "involuntarily or otherwise, had an acquaintance with the then receding Welsh language and the different culture that had flourished within it,"-- that of the Nonconformist combination of radical politics and literary craft which since the mid-18th century enabled Welsh people in villages and then cities to keep moored to their legacy, much as they may have resented it, it did keep them informed of an alternative. The writers of the 'second' movement, within which I'd transfer the late J.C. Powys along with R.S. Thomas-- reconnected their own severed strands to the Cymric inheritance. But, now, Mathias argues, the involvement with the Welsh end of the hyphenated identity appears purely a matter of one's own preference.

I interpret this attitude as follows. Many live not in Wales except as a postal address-- they see themselves as part of the United Kingdom or Great Britain. The names of their towns may seem nearly as remote as the Indian terms common across so many of the United States. There's no committment for nearly all but a few idiosyncratic residents of a land occupied by a people who've invaded and taken over another nation to learn the atavistic language or master the cultural remnants, if any exist outside of museums and monographs.

Mathias concludes that since 1950 and especially 1965 ("when the latest of the older writers emerged" from his mid-1980s perspective) the standstill of Welsh at least halted its rural erosion with an urban and school-based revival. (Same as Irish has in the past few years, perhaps, although I'd say the Gaeltacht and the Welsh-speaking enclaves both continue to decline under the pressure of both anglicized tourism and the dependence of the economy on incomers.) He wonders, in fact, if the move towards reclaiming Welsh leaves many learners too optimistically thinking they should try to write by that language's "demanding standard" when sticking to their native English'd be a wiser option and ensure the continued creativity they could bring to their work by their native means of expression. As of nearly a quarter-century ago, then, Mathias ends his reflections doubting that "Anglo-Welsh" can continue to matter as the nostalgia's vanished, the village's modernized, and the shibboleth of not being truly Welsh without a command of Cymraeg continues to shut out so many emerging citizens of Wales who have no "poor but romantic past" in either language to return to, or who wish such a retreat from modern reality.
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Yn ymestyn o'r Oesoedd Ia hyd y dwthwn hwn, mae'r gyfrol feistrolgar hon yn olrhain hanes gwleidyddol, cymdeithasol a diwylliannol y rhan honno o'r byd y daethpwyd i'w hadnabod fel Cymru. Dyma'r llyfr sy'n egluro pam, er gwaethaf pawb a phopeth, 'rydym yma o hyd'. Yn yr astudiaeth ddiffiniol hon o hanes Cymru, trafodir bryn gaerau cynhanesyddol, olion Rhufeinig, gorchestion a methiannau tywysogion yr Oesoedd Canol, y Diwygiad Protestannaidd, datblygiad Anghydffurfiaeth, y Chwyldro Diwydiannol, twf yr ymdeimlad cenedlaethol, streiciau'r glowyr a'r ymgyrch i ennill ymreolaeth. Yn yr argraffiad newydd hwn, y mae'r stori yn cyrraedd y cyfnod newydd sydd wedi deillio o sefydlu'r Cynulliad Cenedlaethol. ... Read more

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This is an EXACT reproduction of a book published before 1923. This IS NOT an OCR'd book with strange characters, introduced typographical errors, and jumbled words.This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book. ... Read more

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Oral history and archival sources are used to provide a groundbreaking account of social, political, and industrial change in postwar Wales. Examined is the period between the nationalization of the coal industry in 1947 and its privatization in 1994. Through a detailed study of groups, individuals, and communities, the complex nature of work and politics during a period of momentous change in the British coalfield history is demonstrated. Particular attention is given to the politics of the National Union of Mineworkers, the role of the Labour Party, and the impact of pit closures on miners and their localities. ... Read more

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A study of the impact of Renaissance and Reformationscholarship on Welsh society and its leading members. It seeks to showhow broadly disseminated was this scholarship in a part of the kingdomof England which was often regarded as remote and backward. In theabsence of its own civic and court traditions, Wales depended heavilyon English educational institutions.The entry into the universitiesof Oxford and Cambridge and into the inns of court in London of over2500 Welsh students between 1540 and 1640 represented a significantcommitment to the acquisition of learning. It also made the Welsh themost distinct and also most accepted of the non-English elements atthese places. They preserved their separate identity to a markeddegree, aided by special patterns of educational endowments.Highereducation offered the Welsh student the opportunity to share in a wideexperience of Western European intellectual scholarship. It alsooffered career openings for Welshmen which are examined in somedetail. The differences to emerge between north and south Wales are aparticular feature of this study, especially in the context of theproduction of an educated clergy to serve the emergent ReformationChurch in Wales. Equally, the manner in which higher learning gaveopportunities for careers in England, particularly in the law, isgiven much greater attention than ever before. Finally, the studyrecounts the impact of higher learning on patterns of publicadministration in Wales and on the country's cultural life. Therelationship of this learning to the intellectual activities of thegentry, clergy and lawyers is described, especially the growth ofbookish interests and the assimilation of these groups into a milieuof `high culture'. ... Read more

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This textbook is part of a four-volume series offering a detailed history of Wales and the Welsh people at Key Stages 2-3 of the National Curriculum. Each student's text is accompanied by a teacher's book which contains background information and a complete programme of classwork, together with photocopiable pages for use in the classroom or as homework. This particular book concentrates on Wales from pre-history to the times of Hywel Dda. It discusses the Celts, the Roman occupation of Wales, rulers, saints and warriors. ... Read more

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Gives encyclopedic coverage of Welsh history and culture.ILLUS. Maps.

THIS TITLE IS CITED AND RECOMMENDED BY:Books for College Libraries; Catalogue of the Lamont Library, Harvard College; The American Historical Association's Guide to Historical Literature. ... Read more

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A history of the division?s three years on the Western Front with details of staffs and commanders down to battalion level. ... Read more

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A thorough examination of the role of Tudor government and its personnel in an essentially Welsh context, and an analysis of the impact of the Acts of Union on the mechanics of local government in Caernarfonshire. This is important because it adds another dimension to historians' knowledge and understanding of the manner in which local gentry, in collaboration with regional institutions, sought to maintain peace and security in the generations after the Acts of Union. The theme is particularly interesting in view of current researches into the character and principal features of community life in early modern England and Wales and because the Carnarfonshire Quarter Sessions records are the only sources of their kind that have survived for the Welsh counties in that period. They reflect the activities of the justices of the peace and other county officers in one county which formed part of the Old Principality of North Wales. The gentry were required to maintain law and order as servants of the central Tudor administration and were supervised, on the varying degrees of efficiency, by the Council in the Marshes based on Ludlow.It was a period which saw significant social, economic, religious, and cultural changes, some of them attributed to the Tudor Settlement of Wales (1536-43) when the office of magistrate was itnroduced into Wales. The volume is based on an examination of this country's social structure, with particular reference to leading members of the emerging county families who were responsible for administering law and order, the changing personnel of the magistracy, the framework and conduct of administration in Quarter Sessions (the pivot of county government), legal and administration duties. In the last chapter there is a discussion of concepts of the "ordered society" as interpreted in contemporary sources - including Welsh strict-metre verse - which emphasized the "role" of the "Governor" in its early modern context in Welsh society. ... Read more

Product Description
This is an EXACT reproduction of a book published before 1923. This IS NOT an OCR'd book with strange characters, introduced typographical errors, and jumbled words.This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book. ... Read more