James Morris challenges the tourist cliches and looks at the impact of human presence and the layers history in the landscape. He reflects upon issues of identity, exploitation and regeneration; it is a land of beauty and of hardship where - in this post industrial, post rural economy - Tesco and tourism are now the great employers. These are the contrasting realities of the Welsh landscape - that seen by the many visitors and that experienced by most inhabitants. Morris moves between tourist hot spots and the terraces and back streets where the majority of people live. The latter are often hard bitten unpretty places, often built for reasons that no longer exist, no longer the world's largest producer of iron, coal, copper or slate, these are places that have lost their historic and heroic status, sometimes even their raison d'etre. Regeneration is taking place, but it is taking its time. By contrast the tourist landscape is one of pleasure seeking and escape - this is the Wales that visitors are sold and want to see. But in a small land this selling of culture for the tourist pound has complex consequences that build on the complexities of a relationship that has shaped so much of the landscape.

Topics covered include: Psychoactive consumption in Cypriot Bronze Age mortuary ritual; food consumption and ritual at the Early Iron Age tholos cemetery of Moni Odigitria, south-east Greece; elite ideology and feasting practices in Early Iron Age Greece; intoxicating drinks and drunkards in ancient Indian art and literature; sixteenth-century polemics about cold-drinking; food in prehistoric coastal southern Brazil; the deceased as metaphorical food in Iron Age Veneto; food diversity in Mesolithic Scotland; ritualized feasting goods from Norwegian graves; feasting and the state in Uruk Mesopotamia; prehistoric spoons.

The Civil War as seen through the diaries of a brother and sister-one who had to fight it, and one who had to stay home and live it. Volume 1 - Sarah Fowler Morgan A Confederate Girl's Diary Volume 2 - James Morris Morgan Recollections of a Rebel Reefer James Morgan was a 15 year old midshipman on the USS Constitution at the start of the Civil War, and a friend of many future heros on both sides. The war, however, forced a choice, and he chose to join the new Confederate Navy. From then until the conclusion of the war, he experienced the full gamut of the Civil War at sea. As with others who served in that great conflict, however, his story did not end at Appomattox. After the war, as a farmer in South Carolina, he experienced firsthand the "horrible orgy of crime called the 'carpetbag government.'" He later served as a captain in the Egyptian Army, a civil engineer in Mexico, and a consul-general to Australia. He shared courtesies with such men as Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee, Grover Cleveland, and Ulysses S. Grant. During a long and rich life, whether enduring privation, injury, loss, or disappointment-or enjoying the pleasures of friendship, and adventure-James Morgan was in every respect a true gentleman of the Old South. This is his story; and it provides a remarkable insight into both the Civil War and it's aftermath. Read it, and the story of his equally remarkable sister, in: MORGAN'S WAR "One of the most riveting Civil War reads you will ever have-made all the more compelling by the fact that every bit of it actually happened."

James Morris leads an all-star cast including Karita Mattila, Ben Heppner, Thomas Allen and René Pape, in this production of Wagner's comic opera, recorded live at New York's Metropolitan Opera in 2001. James Levine conducts.