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The editors Peter Finch and Grahame Davies are ideally placed to
select the writers and writing which reflect the changing face of
Cardiff. Here are revealing and entertaining contributions from
some of the finest writers in Britain, all of whom have something
personal, original and incisive to say about the city, both in
English and in translation from the Welsh - including Niall
Griffiths, Dannie Abse, John Williams, James Hawes,Trezza
Azzopardi, Sean Burke, Duncan Bush, Gillian Clarke, Anna Davis, Nia
Williams, Lloyd Robson, Owen Martell, Bernice Rubens, Alexander
Cordell, Glyn Jones, Emyr Humphreys, and many, many others. "The
Big Book of Cardiff" is essential reading for anyone with an
interest in Wales' capital.
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Real Liverpool (Paperback)
Niall Griffiths; Series edited by Peter Finch
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R318
R263
Discovery Miles 2 630
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In population terms, Liverpool isn't a vast city (dwarfed by
Birmingham, say), but it looms colossal in the history (recorded
and mythical) of the British Isles, and in fact the world. "Real
Liverpool" is Niall Griffiths' antidote to the flood of mawkish
twaddle that will appear in the build-up to 2008 when Liverpool is
European City of Culture.It showcases Griffiths' love/hate
relationship with the city, its maritime and merchant histories,
class divisions, sectarian divides, Celtic influences, and the
siege mentality underpinning the celebrated Scouse humour. Nor does
he flinch from Liverpool's dark side: the drugs, the urban blight,
the fallout from Thatcherism, the internecine violence. Jamie
Bulger, Heysel, Hillsborough, the Dockers' Strike, the Toxeth
Riots, all of these and more are discussed."Real Liverpool" is
underpinned by a strong autobiographical element which details the
author's birth and formative years in the city, his movement away
from it, and the abiding pull it exerts. In addition, Griffiths
interviews many people closely connected to the city, from personal
friends and family members to artists and workers. From the Wirral
to Warrington, Anfield to Everton, Bottle to Diddyland, Griffiths
criss-crosses the city by the Ferry and through the Tunnels, from
John Lennon airport to the racecourse and down the docks, building
a picture of a city which, whatever its faults, is never dull.
of the British Museum, University College, RADA, the Friends House,
the BMA, Great Ormond Street Hospital. Bloomsbury is crammed with
history and with contemporary decision-making. But there is also
working class Bloomsbury and, now, Bengali Bloomsbury in the east.
Biographer and novelist Nicholas Murray walks this crowded square
mile or so, among the locals, the students, the tourists, alone or
in the company of local characters, to give Bloomsbury the 'Real'
series treatment of history, memoir, 'psychogeography' and oblique
approaches to the familiar. His entertaining and informative text
is accompanied by equally oblique images, the sort you won't find
in either tourist guides or regular history books. All of which
present Bloomsbury as it's never been portrayed before: intimate,
contemporary, exploratory and occasionally downright strange.
The Real Series moves to west Wales with a new volume focused on
Tenby and its hinterland. Poet, past resident and frequent visitor
Tony Curtis roams south Pembrokeshire, from the coastal resorts of
Tenby and Saundersfoot, west to the surfers of Stackpole and
Barafundle and north to the Landsker, the cultural boundary between
English speaking south Pembs and the Welsh speaking north. In
keeping with the series Curtis view his area through the eyes of a
local and as a visitor, digging into his own Pembrokeshire
backstory - and deeper into is history but also observing keenly
the Pembrokeshire of the new century.
Zen Cymru is the new collection of poems by that master of modern
angst, Peter Finch. Not one for quiet meditations, this voice is:
loud, bewildered, satirical, furious, sad, fearful and funny. This
is a Wales that missed its revolution in 'I Chew Gum and Think of
Rifles'. This is a Wales beset by: rain, the ghosts of
hard-drinking poets, of holy wells guarded by heifers, of sports
crowds, Ikea, sheep, enormous storm cloudsA", and the 'Entry of
Christ Into Cardiff, 2005'. A health scare merits a mini-epic in
'The Clinic'. Elvis is seen in Asda, Merthyr. Travel brings little
respite, only access to foreign anxieties and temptations. We visit
'The Miro Mini-bar' in Barcelona, look for Bella Bartok in Hungary,
take a road trip to Ireland, find more rain and that The land gives
out in an emerald flail.A"America offers defunct bluesmen, a
murderous Phil Spector, and over-zealous security personal near the
Chelsea Hotel, NYC. Finch is a well-known performance poet and his
poems have the immediacy and the dramatic impact of pieces
conceived for the stage. Formal innovation is allied with themes
that are resonant and deeply humane. Zen Cymru will win yet more
fans to the Finch cult.
In his first full collection for six years, Peter Finch, premier
exponent of modernism, works once more at the brink of culture.
Employing a range of styles, techni ques and forms, he explores
what late 20th century life is l ike. '
This sequel offers another unorthodox travel guide to Cardiff,
Wales. Part history, part topographical writing, and part
traditional guidebook, this work explores Cardiff's best
off-the-beaten-path destinations such as Ninian Park, Howell's
Girls School, Cae'r Castell, and Steep Holm.
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No Love for Johnnie (DVD)
Peter Finch, Stanley Holloway, Mary Peach, Rosalie Crutchley, Donald Pleasence, …
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R142
Discovery Miles 1 420
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Out of stock
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1960s drama starring Peter Finch as a parliamentary MP whose thirst
for greater power leads him into political intrigue. Johnnie Byrne
(Finch) is a Labour MP who aspires to the big-time. His hopes are
raised when his party triumphs in a general election, but Johnnie
is overlooked for a role on the front benches. To top it off, his
wife (Rosalie Crutchley) has just left him and balancing two
mistresses, including the youthful Pauline (Mary Peach), is proving
difficult. When Johnny is approached by a couple of fellow
backbenchers for help in a scheme that may destabilise the
government but advance their careers, Johnny is faced with an
important choice...
In The Roots of Rock, from Cardiff to Mississippi and Back Peter
Finch reflects on how popular music has shaped both his life and
the culture in which he lives, from first hearing American music on
the radio in his Cardiff home in the 1950s to the compendious and
downloadable riches of digital files. Finch has always gone to gigs
and now he travels to the bars of Ireland, the clubs of New York,
the plains of Tennessee, the flatlands of Mississippi and the
mountains of North Carolina to get a feel for the culture from
which his favourite music originates. The resulting book mixes
musical autobiography with an exploration of physical places in
western Europe and the US. It is a demonstration of the power of
music to create a world for the listener that is simultaneously of
and beyond the place in which it is heard. Finch marks his journey
with reminiscences of music in Britain from skiffle and early Cliff
Richard pop to Bill Cotton and his Band to Champion Jack Dupree
playing the local British Legion. There are asides on forming your
own (destined to fail) band, the rise of folk music, the arrival of
the blues and the burgeoning Welsh language scene. In the US come
visits to Dollywood, Graceland, Muscle Shoals, Grand Ole Opry and
Stax, plus the Appalachian mountains and the crossroads on Highway
49 where Robert Johnson made his devilish pact. The cast of
musicians includes Muddy Waters, Taylor Swift, Bessie Smith, Tommy
Steele, Aretha Franklin, Ray Charles, Johnny Cash, Chris Tweed and
singing cowboys. They are joined by music historians like Cecil
Sharp, Maud Kapeles and Harrison Mayes who helped formalise and
save traditions, by jugbands, gospel choirs and Anne Nichols, the
tragic Knoxville Girl. Each chapter is accompanied by a multi-track
play list to help the reader have the full flavour of what Finch's
musical experiences and bring alive the many sharp witted stories
and thoughtful cultural connections. The result is an entertaining,
informative book from which the reader will learn much and hear
more.
In his youth, Peter Finch wove his way through a series of
exploits and adventures. Travels took him to Canada, where a
fateful encounter in the Rocky Mountains opened up new horizons. In
midlife he and his wife Gundi made the shift to country living,
ushering in a new phase in their life, as they set down roots in
the hills and settled into a deliberately simplified lifestyle.
Peter relates how he and Gundi immersed themselves in ways
guided by nature. As she created and sold glass sculptures, he sunk
his hands and tools into pure glacial-till soils, sowing, planting,
and growing culinary and medicinal herbs, heirloom vegetables and
salad greens to take to farmers markets and restaurants in and
around Toronto. Invigorated by the pleasures and health benefits of
growing, selling, and eating fresh organic food, Peter reveals how
he became a passionate advocate of traditional, small-scale,
chemical-free farming.
"High Up in the Rolling Hills" shares the personal journey of an
independent couple as they explore the vital role of nature,
creativity, and healthy food in life.
In his youth, Peter Finch wove his way through a series of
exploits and adventures. Travels took him to Canada, where a
fateful encounter in the Rocky Mountains opened up new horizons. In
midlife he and his wife Gundi made the shift to country living,
ushering in a new phase in their life, as they set down roots in
the hills and settled into a deliberately simplified lifestyle.
Peter relates how he and Gundi immersed themselves in ways
guided by nature. As she created and sold glass sculptures, he sunk
his hands and tools into pure glacial-till soils, sowing, planting,
and growing culinary and medicinal herbs, heirloom vegetables and
salad greens to take to farmers markets and restaurants in and
around Toronto. Invigorated by the pleasures and health benefits of
growing, selling, and eating fresh organic food, Peter reveals how
he became a passionate advocate of traditional, small-scale,
chemical-free farming.
"High Up in the Rolling Hills" shares the personal journey of an
independent couple as they explore the vital role of nature,
creativity, and healthy food in life.
Peter Finch has long been a significant figure in
Welsh-poetry-in-English and a busy editor and publisher. The Welsh
Poems, a title which pays homage to poet John James, is a survey of
his more experimental work from the past two decades, including
visual work, sound poems, and a number of playful texts that riff
on language, grammar and typography. The Welsh language seeps into
Finch's work at all levels, sometimes penetrating the poems to the
core, and at other times held at arm's length.
Troubles Swapped for Something Fresh is a eclectic and exciting
gathering of poem and prose-poem manifestos and unmanifestos that
try to understand what poetry is and who or what it might be for.
It is also about what the authors might want or demand from poetry,
in either a general or personal way. Manifestos are often
declamatory and incendiary, but I have tried to defuse polemic and
overtly dictatorial rhetoric by juxtaposition, and by selecting
work from a wide range of critical and poetic positions, not least
that of satire and wit.I've previously - as any of my students will
tell you - dismissed manifestos, but have more recently found them
useful to react against, to incite comment and both critical and
poetical reponse with. Rather than read them as a definitive and
final statement, I have come to see them as an important part of
poetics: a useful way to think about reasons for writing, about
processes and techniques one might use to make poetry, and about
existing or potential relationships with real or imaginary
audiences. The book is designed to encourage and incite readers to
engage with what all too often is regarded as a trivial and
occasional art form. I believe, as do many of the other
contributors, that poetry is far more than self-expression and
heartfelt truth, it is where language is actually rooted and
initiallly located; it is where thought itself comes into being.
Language is wonderful and intoxicating stuff, an engaging and
pliable medium with endless potential for reinvention and
recreation. If the reader can find enthusiasm, passion, laughter
and deep thought in this book - and then argue and engage with it -
I shall be a happy editor. These manifestos and unmanifestos do not
add up to a whole, but in their communcal incoherence and
difference they challenge and delight.
In the Middle Ages the port of Cardiff stretched from Chepstow to
Gower. Peter Finch, archetypal Cardiffian, sets out to explore his
heritage, walking the Welsh side of the Severn Estuary and
reclaiming his personal memories in addition to discovering the
lives of others. And with a detour to Maismore, the highest tidal
point of the estuary, he walks the English side too, taking in the
differences with Wales, reviving past links and looking at his
homeland from abroad. On his journey he sees the estuary as border,
a highway for trade and ideas, an industrial zone, and a place
where people spend their leisure. Rich in anecdote, evocative in
description, Finch's book takes in villages and cities, power
stations and fishermen, castles and caravans, leg-aching walks and
deckchairs on the beach. The tragedy of Lynmouth, the competing
delights of Porthcawl, Barry and Weston-super-Mare, the industrial
sites of Usk and Port Talbot, the fate of Cardiff, Newport and
Swansea docks, the ancient trackways of Swansea Bay and the Star
Inn at Neath are just some of the many stories which punctuate
Finch's epic walk along some of the most beautiful coastline in
Britain.
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Discovery Miles 3 300
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