Welsh Literature, Booktubers and Coffee Recommendations - St David's Day Special

Happy St David's Day Everyone :) // Dydd gŵyl Dewi hapus Pawb :)

Books Mentioned:
Under Milkwood - Dylan Thomas
How Green Was by Valley - Richard Llewelyn
Selected Stories - Rhys Davies
Turf or Stone - Margiad Evans
Cove - Cynan Jones
Leading to Texas-2 - Aled Smith
The Blue Tent - Richard Gwyn
Hello Friend We Missed You - Richard Owain Roberts
The Elected Member - Bernice Ruebens
The Old Devils - Kingsey Amis

Booktubers mentioned:
@Welsh Reader

Booker Boy Book Club Choice - / Story of the Eye by Georges Bataille

[KDbooks]

🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿 Dydd Gŵyl Dewi Hapus Pawb 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿

Any Welsh recommendations please put in the comments below!

[GuiltyFeat]

Some Welsh writers I have come across:

Couple of poets - R.S. Thomas, Dannie Abse, Jonathan Edwards.
Some novelists - Joe Dunthorne, Trezza Azzopardi, Thomas Morris, Ken Follett.

Happy St. David's Day - Leeks and Daffs and Dragons, oh my!

[AuburnAfterglow]

I know next to nothing about Wales, yep. Nice recommendations :) I have just read Arthur Machen's The Hill of Dreams, it was a weeeird but excellent book!! Some amazing nature descriptions of the Welsh landscape there. Loved it.

[TooManyHeathers]

Loved this list!! Cynan Jones' The Cove is fantastic! I haven't read any others of his, but their on my list. I've just added The Blue tent and The Resume to my list of books to look into. I'm starting off my month with One Moonlit Night. I can never find many people talking about Welsh books on booktube despite looking all the time - thanks for this!!! ❤️🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿

[LanaExLibris]

So cool hearing more about Welsh culture ( I feel like I don't know much about it and now I'm curious to find out more) and the fact that you included other book tubers to check out!!

[PageTurnersWithKatja]

Happy St David's Day! Great recommendations and slide into the Man Booker Prize. Look forward to thoughts on your buddy read.

[amandanicholls]

Hi and Happy St. David’s Day! 🤗. Please please please do regular features on Welsh literature. I’m currently reading Stranger Within the Gates by Bertha Thomas who also left Wales for England but kept on returning through her pretty gothic stories. Loving this collection from Honno press. I’m reading through the Honno classics series and can recommend The Small Mine by Menna Gallie set in the valleys.

[MargaretPinard]

Yay! What a great run-down on some Welsh favorites--and I want to know more about Kingsley Amis-Swansea connection! *gets to sleuthing*

[soniajohnson]

Hope to get to some Welsh classics this year. Last year read Iron and Gold by Hilda Vaughan (Honno Press) which is a retelling of the folk tale of the Lady of Llyn y Fan Fach. I also read a slim biography of Dorothy Edwards an author from the Ogmore Vale. She was on the fringes of the Bloomsbury set, but was hopelessly anxious, eventually throwing herself under a train. I am hoping to read her two novels this year. I have also have Amy Dilwyn on my TBR for this year. I should have lined up these books for March, but instead I am across the pond in the Appalachian mountains reading Betty. Of course most probably the myth of Wales is summed up by How Green was My Valley, close-knit communities surrounding coal mines written by someone who was not born in Wales. Cynan Jones could be a good bookclub choice, his books are short.

[pastorytime]

You're a gent. Thanks for your kindness buddy, I'll endeavour to live up to those words! Recommending books to avid readers was definitely the best part of the job! Happy St Dave's 🥦 Bert

[penelopegough]

Last year I took part in the Welsh Readathon, Dewithon. Organised by Paula Bardell-Hedley. We read One Moonlight Night by Caradog Prichard. What a marvellous treat. So thanks mate. Your choices are really good and I’m off to seek and find.

[beatingaroundthebooks]

What a great intro!
I'm a bit late to the party (what's up with YouTube not showing me your videos?). Lots of great recs, thank you!
Love Sian and Bert's channel 💚

[somebenfen]

I still have For Those Who Come After by Gary Raymond on my tbr shelf which I'm looking forward too!
Also "Violence and Son" by Gary Owen is an AMAZING play which I would recommend highly!

[billyjones]

This is brilliant! It's so encouraging to see someone promoting Welsh writing in English on YouTube. I recently graduated from doing an MA in English lit/Welsh writing in English at Swansea University and had no idea until I began the MA that Wales had such a rich, diverse and bilingual literary heritage. Though the situation is improving ever so slightly now, I had only ever heard of Dylan Thomas growing up in south Wales. It's borderline criminal that we hear nothing of Gwyn Thomas, Glyn Jones, Harri Webb, Dorothy Edwards, Lynette Roberts, Rachel Trezise, Leonora Brito and so many others in our schools. I've since been devouring the fantastic Library of Wales series from Parthian and am forever grateful to my wonderful professors at Swansea for nurturing the study of Welsh cultural life.

Some of my absolute favourites (though not all have been published in the Library of Wales series) for those interested are:
Un Nos Ola Leuad or One Moonlit Night by Caradog Prichard. There is a Penguin Twentieth-Century classics edition of this and a more recent Canongate one, both wonderfully translated from the original Welsh by Philip Mitchell. An utterly haunting work of quasi-magical realism by a somewhat tragic figure. Prichard also made his mark in poetry and was crowned Bard for three consecutive years and eventually chair at the national Eisteddfod. I believe several of his poems are collected in The Bloodaxe Book of Modern Welsh Poetry.

Anything by Raymond Williams. Williams was a towering figure in cultural criticism but also a prolific writer of fiction. Border Country, The People of the Black Mountains and Second Generation are nuanced explorations of community and borders, emotional as well as geographical.

Ron Berry was a chronicler of the post-industrial decline of the Rhondda Valley whose works are chock full of glorious nature writing, black humour and sardonic wit. His most famous work is So Long Hector Bebb but This Bygone and Flame and Slag are also excellent.

Kate Roberts was a force in poetry and prose. Much of her work is translated from the original Welsh, including her 1936 novel Feet In Chains as well as most, if not all, of her poetry. Numerous studies of Roberts have drawn comparisons with Virginia Woolf.

For more contemporary authors, Christopher Meredith, Niall Griffiths (if you can stomach it!), Cynan Jones as mentioned in the video, Jon Gower, Stevie Davies, Trezza Azzopardi and Rachel Trezise are all great choices! Apologies for the long comment, I just hope I can, like you, do a good deed by getting this stunning writing out there. Happy reading and thank you for the upload! :)

[GunpowderFictionPlot]

Ooh, I have Hello Friends We Miss You on my bedside table, I didn't realise the author was Welsh. I should read that, my Canine-Kevin Jones novel and another novel and make it into a Welsh themed reading vlog or something.

As somebody from outside of the UK, I will almost never use the word 'British', it feels like using European when I really mean German.

This was a great video.

[pastorytime]

dydd gwyl dewi hapus! lovely to hear about welsh books on booktube and you should definitely join in with Dewithon! a couple of books that i've read and enjoyed and think you might like too are - We don't know what we're doing by thomas morris, Tirzah and the Prince of Crows by Deborah Kay Davies and Among Others by Jo Walton. am also a huge fan of hardlines coffee. have a great day! sian x

[CartonManetteDarnay]

Yay for Welsh book reccs! I'm excited to check out your recommendations. I have some in return. If you've never read Water Shall Refuse them by Lucie McKnight Hardy, it has big Shirley Jackson vibes. I really enjoyed it! Also, Seren books have a collection of Mabinogi retellings from current authors. I haven't read any but they sound really interesting. Gobeithio gei di Dydd Gwyl Dewi hapus!

[thebobsphere]

Would you consider Roald Dahl Welsh? I remember during the turn of the century, the media focused on a lot of Welsh bands: Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci, Super Furry Animals, Stereophonics, Manic Street Preachers and Catatonia so at least there’s a musical legacy oh and there’s John Cale 🙂

[AmritabytheBook]

Sarah Waters is Welsh? :O
I really enjoyed listening to you talking about Wales tho. I see very few people talking about these things - and I lived in the UK!

[hillA]

Oh I am gonna get me some Margiad Evans - maybe staring with Country Dance though.