From Rhondda heroes chasing the American dream to rioters staking a claim in their society In the Frame is a powerful alternative history of twentieth-century South Wales, offered from the personal viewpoint of cultural historian Dai Smith. It takes the reader into a territory - a mythical and veritable Dai Country - formed by the influence of writers and painters, boxers and historians, friends and relatives, rioters and correspondents, critics and photographers. As well as the autobiographical overtones of a Tondypandy childhood and distinguished career, In the Frame contains the far wider undertones of a collective biography. Its mosaic pieces together the consciousness of a society which led its inhabitants in search of fame and fortune as well as the daily struggle for rights and recognition without sympathy or sentimentality. An alternative history of twentieth century Wales by TV presenter and the nation's leading cultural historian Dai Smith.

'Dream On' is a composite novel: part black comedy and flashlight noir thriller, part meditation on the stories that connect up the frayed wires in the business of living. There's Digger Davies and his one cap for Wales and ultimately untimely death - the award winning photographer whose return home will become a quest for his own forgotten identity and compromised life - the thwarted politician in a hospital bed writing his own obituary - and a beautiful girl caught in time, alive in an old man's memory.

Part black comedy and flashlight noir thriller, part meditation on the stories that connect up the frayed wires in the business of living, this fictional debut experiments with genre boundaries and paints detailed portraits of its characters. There is Digger Davies and his untimely death; the award-winning photographer whose return home will become a quest for his own forgotten identity and compromised life; the thwarted politician in a hospital bed writing his own obituary; and a beautiful girl caught in time, alive in an old man's memory.

The village of Tanygraig on the Welsh-English border is the setting for this passionate novel of love and its consequences. Beti, the beautiful and wilful daughter of a pub landlord, is pursued by two men: Llew, her aggressive, red-haired cousin, and Evan, the dreamy miller and would-be poet. She has to make a choice but it's not her future alone that depends on her decision. She and Tanygraig are positioned precariously on borders of class, nation, language, and changing times. In this enduring novel by Geraint Goodwin, first published in 1936, Wales is associated with tradition and stability, England connotes modernity and movement. Beti is conscious of living at a temporal border: "The old way of things was ending; she had come at the end of one age and the beginning of another. Wales would be the last to go - but it was going..."

In What I Know I Cannot Say / All That Lies Beneath, Dai Smith combines a novella and a linked section of short stories to create a dazzling fictional synthesis that takes the reader on a tour of the South Wales Valleys during the twentieth century. 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 industry to the present day, What I Know I Cannot Say presents a moving and vivid panorama of twentieth-century Wales, brought to life by Smith's meticulous attention to historical detail and distinct gift of invoking the smells, sights and sounds of the past. We find ourselves smelling the cordite of ammunition among the ruins of Cassino in 1943, during the invasion of Italy; the damp coal in the mineshafts; the beer-soaked wood of pub floors; the smell of fresh coffee from a modern percolator. Dai's journey is an emotional and moving one, told in gritty, realistic prose.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.

Raymond Williams (1921-1988) was the most influential socialist writer and thinker in post-war Britain. From 1961, with the publication of The Long Revolution, his reputation was bound up with the theory and practice of Culture, as itself a social dynamic. However, Williams always considered that his critical and imaginative work formed an integral whole and that their complementary pattern was crucial to his personal intent and wider purpose. In particular, for him the appearance of the pathbreaking Culture and Society in 1958 and of his revelatory first novel Border Country in 1960 were twinned events. Now, for the first time, making full use of Williams' private and unpublished papers and by placing him in a wide social and cultural landscape, Dai Smith, in this highly original and riveting biographical study, uncovers how the life to 1961 is indeed an explanation of Raymond Williams' immense and connected creative and intellectual achievement.

First published in 1947, The Alone to the Alone unites Gwyn Thomas' lyrical and philosophical flights of narrative in a satire whose savagery is only relieved by irrepressible laughter. It is Gwyn Thomas' most shaped work: the underlying meaning of South Wales' history is not so much documented as laid bare for universal dissection and dissemination. The novel, with its distinctive plural narration, is a choric commentary on human illusion and knowledge, on power and its attendant deprivation, on dreams and their destruction. The Alone to the Alone is History as Carnival and, in Gwyn Thomas' unique voice, a comic vision of humanity that recognizes no geographical boundaries.

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.

This edition celebrates the centenary of Williams's birth. 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. "It is Smith's ambition to set out the lonely, almost monastic path Raymond took through childhood, army and adult education towards his deserved eminence. But the biographer's greatest achievement is to find his own discerning route through what often seems to be a jungle of contradiction... This is a worthwhile book and a very good one." - David Hare, The Guardian "It is a remarkable piece of work and will henceforth be essential to the understanding of the making of Raymond Williams." - Eric Hobsbawm "Becomes at once the authoritative account... Smith has done all that we can ask the historian as biographer to do." - Stefan Collini, London Review of Books "Carrying an impressive deal of intensive research lightly... the portraiture throughout is graphic, richly detailed and subtly shaded... in these packed, lucidly written pages..." - Terry Eagleton, New Welsh Review

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.

The Library of Wales' Story" anthologies feature the very best of Welsh short fiction, written amid the political, social, and economic turbulence of 20th-century Wales and beyond. More than 80 outstanding works from the classics of Dylan Thomas, Rhys Davies, Arthur Machen, and Gwyn Thomas to the almost forgotten brilliance of work by Margiad Evans and Dilys Rowe and then forward to the prize-winning work of Emyr Humphreys, Rachel Trezise, and Leonora Brito, coloring and engaging in the life of a changed country. Story Volume 1" depicts a Wales wracked by a driving capitalism, shriven by hypocrisy and soon devastated by two world wars, but still creative, resilient, and sometimes laughing uproariously. The writers produced stories to entertain, engage, and share in the intimate lives of a distinctive people. In this selection Dai Smith has crafted an anthology that gives a unique insight into the life of a country and the talent of its major writers.

This scarce antiquarian book is a selection from Kessinger Publishing's Legacy Reprint Series. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment to protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature. Kessinger Publishing is the place to find hundreds of thousands of rare and hard-to-find books with something of interest for everyone

This scarce antiquarian book is a selection from Kessinger Publishing's Legacy Reprint Series. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment to protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature. Kessinger Publishing is the place to find hundreds of thousands of rare and hard-to-find books with something of interest for everyone!

This book is a facsimile reprint and may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages.

The Library of Wales' Story" anthologies feature the very best of Welsh short fiction, written amid the political, social, and economic turbulence of 20th-century Wales and beyond. More than 80 outstanding works from the classics of Dylan Thomas, Rhys Davies, Arthur Machen, and Gwyn Thomas to the almost forgotten brilliance of work by Margiad Evans and Dilys Rowe and then forward to the prize-winning work of Emyr Humphreys, Rachel Trezise, and Leonora Brito, coloring and engaging in the life of a changed country. Story Volume 2" depicts a Wales facing up to a dramatically changed culture and society in a world where the old certainties of class and money, of love and war, of living and surviving do not hold. The writers explore the spirit of a country while the ground keeps shifting beneath them. In this selection Dai Smith has crafted an anthology that gives a unique insight into the life of a country: identity, language, class, and sex are all explored intensely in this kaleidoscope of the best of the last 50 years of Welsh short fiction.