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The Crossing
The Crossing bridges the past and the present and connects Wales with America, as it tells of coal owners and coal workers in the age of great transatlantic liners and fortunes to be made. At its heart is a father's search for his daughter in Welsh valleys no longer proud, where creaming off regeneration grants has replaced coal mining as a way of life and development parks now stand where once did pit head wheels. It follows a lifetime's search for lost love, the sinking of a great ship in a great war, misplaced family and forlorn hopes where individual lives are shaped and fated in the shadow of modernity and the cold hand of progress. This brave, bold and challenging work conjures a vivid cast of characters into being and offering – with ready vim and ample vigour – their compelling, complex and ultimately telling story.
What I Know I Cannot Say
Picking up where his 2013 novel Dream On left off, What I Know I Cannot Say follows the life story of Billy's father, Dai Maddox. When Billy's former partner Bran shows up wanting to record Dai's life story to put together a documentary, Dai looks back on his past, remembering his childhood as a destitute orphan, his work as a collier in the mines and the subsequent drifting between menial jobs, alleviated only by reading and drawing; his enrolment in the British Army and participation in the invasion of Italy during the Second World War; and post-war life under socialism, when he was back in the pits and married to Billy's mother, Mona. Moving from the heyday of the pre-mechanised coal indu...
Off the Track
From a working-class Rhondda childhood through to the glamour of Barry Grammar and onto a coveted Balliol College scholarship and study in New York, David Smith was the rising intellectual star of a generation. In this beautifully written memoir Dai Smith engages and entertains with a personal life and times with the characteristic verve of a writer who has illuminated the modern history of the people of South Wales.
A Warrior's Tale
RAYMOND WILLIAMS (1921-1998) was the most influential socialist writer and thinker in post-war Britain. Now, for the first time, making full use of Williams's private and unpublished papers and by placing him in a wide social and cultural landscape, Dai Smith, in this highly original and much praised biography, uncovers how Williams's life to 1961 is an explanation of his immense intellectual achievement.
Dream on
Dream On is a black comedy, a flashlight noir thriller, a meditation on the lives and stories that connect up the frayed wires in the business of living.
A Late Return: Table-Tennis a la Carte
Bill Rees has been living in the south of France for ten years working as an itinerant bookseller in Montpellier. The one thing he misses about England is table tennis. Then he sees an advert to join a club for "experienced players only" and veterans. He starts training immediately, he's forty and not as fit as he used to be but Bill Rees is returning to the game à la carte. Covering one Sunday tournament in the depths of Languedoc when his team bids to make the National Finals, Bill Rees produces a deeply felt and deeply funny homage to the beautiful game of ping-pong. Rees shows the sport for what it is: painful, exhilarating, tactical, fast (especially when his club mate Alain is at the table), consuming. All of which is revealed from the perspective of a Brit playing in French amateur leagues. Conveyed is the pain of competition, the agony of losing and the joys of victory. The reader is also regaled with a Zen-like insight into the sport. For all those athletes who dream of glory being around the corner and never too late. Contains illustrations by the Monpellier based artist Beachy.
Brittle with Relics
Brittle with Relics is a landmark history of the people of Wales during a period of great national change.'Richly humane, viscerally political, generously multi-voiced, Brittle with Relics is oral history at its revelatory best.'DAVID KYNASTON'Fascinating.' OBSERVER'Powerful.' LITERARY REVIEW'Inspired.' GUARDIANBrittle with Relics is a vital history of Wales undergoing some of the country's most seismic and traumatic events: the disasters of Aberfan and Tryweryn; the rise of the Welsh language movement; the Miners' Strike and its aftermath; and the narrow vote in favour of partial devolution.Drawing upon the voices of its inhabitants - includin Neil Kinnock, Rowan Williams, Leanne Wood, Gruf...
All that Lies Beneath
All That Lies Beneath is white-knuckle fiction ride: power, sex, money, and ambition all twist through the pages as Smith creates a feast of intellectual and physical provocation in stories that send a shudder of fearful recognition directly through to the reader.
A Warrior's Tale
RAYMOND WILLIAMS was the most influential socialist writer and thinker in post-war Britain. Now, for the first time, making full use of Williams's private and unpublished papers and by placing him in a wide social and cultural landscape, Dai Smith, in this highly original and much praised biography, uncovers how Williams's life to 1961 is an explanation of his immense intellectual achievement.
Merthyr, the Crucible of Modern Wales
For most of the nineteenth century Merthyr Tydfil was the largest urban settlement Wales had ever seen. Merthyr, The Crucible of Modern Wales, looks at Merthyr's rise to prominence and how it foretold the economic and social transformation of Welsh history. It was Merthyr, from the armed rising of 1831 to the electoral radicalism of 1868 and 1900, which led the way towards democracy and civic betterment in the teeth of material degradation and high-handed repression. This volume brings the whole epic history of Merthyr, from 1760 to 1912, into the focus of a fresh and utterly convincing perspective. For Modern Wales, see Merthyr, in a book which is a triumph of readability and intellectual passion.
