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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.
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.
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.
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.
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