A novella, a play, a collection of short stories, are all in "Journey to the Land of Green Chartreuse." Subjects vary from egomaniacal directors to King Arthur's Cave and the eerie punishments of It Master Shadow!

Dedwydd Jones is a bloke who has lived for some time and is determined to continue this state of affairs, for a while at least. During his existence, he has seen things and done stuff, and, occasionally written about it. Some of his words have made it into books, plays, telly, and radio. This makes him dead chuffed. When people buy his books, he really gets excited. It means he can eat, and also, on a good week, drink. Dedwydd is proficient at rubbing up people the wrong way, but these are only useless parasites who suck the life force out of modern theatre and literature - particularly in Wales. this collection of plays, Sheer Agony! is a perfect illustration of this. Born in Wales, Dedwydd qualifies as a short Welsh man, but he has also sampled the civilized world, living long in England, France, Germany and Switzerland. You should read his plays. In fact, you should buy them. You really should!

Set in Wales in a cottage by the sea. A ruined poet returns home to his ruined friends - Aaron of the phantom daughters, the sea-wracked, Johnny Conch, Black Branwen, Olga the Ever-Ready, who battle for the poet's survival or destruction. Who wins in the end?

Freedom fighter Tom Paine was threatened with the noose in England, the guillotine in France, and ostracism in the USA, all because he wrote books - notably Common Sense, which toppled monarchies, and The Age of Reason, which challenged established religion. Paine was one of a cluster of 17th/18th century republican writers and activists whose pens changed the world. But who also paid a cruel price for it. John Bunyan (Pilgrim's Progress) spent twelve years in jail (saved by Celestial Rock ); feminist Quarker leader Margaret Fell, did seven years; preacher James Naylor was tortured to death; even the creator of Paradis Lost, John Milton, just escaped with his life; famed satirist Daniel Defoe (Robinson Crusoe) was placed in the pillory and bankrupted; rebel naval leader Richard Parker was hanged from the yard arm; French dramatist and revolutionary Olympia de Gourges was guillotined in Paris. But their ideas and example survive to this very day. These libertarian 'underdogs and troublemakers' appear in these pages. Read their stories, then perform them

The Pit and the Pendulum, The Black Cat, The Fall of the House of Usher, The Raven -classics of poetry and horror, seen in a hundred films, known all over the world. But who wrote these amazing works? Yes, the great Edgar Allan Poe - a familiar name to many perhaps. But who actually was this famous Edgar Allan Poe? Where did he come from? Was he really an opium addict and alcoholic? Did he marry his cousin, a thirteen year old child? Did he have a shocking affair with his wife''s mother? Was he expelled from West Point? Did he attack, sometimes physically, the leading writers of the day? Was he a monster, or a misunderstood genius? Edgar Allan Poe''s family hailed from Ireland and Wales. Dedwydd Jones brings a special understanding to the tortured brilliance of his fellow Celt. In The Raven Man, Dedwydd Jones presents an historically accurate picture of the extraordinary Mr Poe, set in his own day, where Poe is seen, for the very first time, as someone who was all too human after all.

A saga of England's first Empire - not in America, Africa or India, but in the lands of her nearest neighbour, France. After Henry V's victory at Agincourt, England's fifteen-year occupation of Paris began. It was an object lesson in Empire building - empire losing. England's burning of Joan of Arc lost them their first overseas empire. Henry's untimely death left the succession open. Into it stepped Henry's widow, Queen Catherine of Valois, and her Welsh squire, Owen Tudor, bearer of the dragon of Wales. Out of his secret union came one of the most moving love stories in European history. The lovers, beset by murder, treason and betrayal on all sides, finally ushered in the Welsh line of kings, the Tudors, but at a terrible cost to themselves. The long reign of the dragon culminated in the glorious rule of the last of the family, the Welsh speaking Queen Elizabeth Tudor, patron of Shakespeare, hammer of the Spanish. The Dragon had traveled a long way.

Edward Williams (1746-1826) also known by his Bardic name, 'Iolo Morganwg, ' was a Republican, Radical, Revolutionary, Pacifist, Abolitionist, Flutist, Song Writer, Jailbird, Lexicographer, Grammarian, Antiquarian, Encyclopaedist. Linguist, Debtor, Mediaevalist, Folklorist, Bird Watcher, Agriculturist, Master Mason, Bookshop Owner, Poet (in both Welsh and English) a Bard, a Druid, a Visionary, a 'Noble Savage, ' a 'Child of Nature, ' a 'Pagan' - in short, a true Herald of Wales He was also a 'fabulist' and 'invented' a whole cosmology and mythology relating to Stonehenge and the Druids, and the 'antient Britons, ' that is, the Welsh. He incorporated these 'discoveries' into the ceremonies of the Welsh National Festival of Poetry, the 'eisteddfods, ' which, quite authentically, date from pre-Christian times. Iolo proclaimed these 'mythologies' on Primrose Hill, Hampstead Heath, London, in 1792. They were formally recognized at the great Carmarthen 1819 Eisteddfod, and have lasted in the form laid down by Iolo to this very day. Iolo's vision of a united Wales continues to draw admirers not only from Wales but from many parts of the world, and have included, in their day, such figures as Tom Paine, 'Humanity's William Wilberforce, ' and 'General George Washington.'

Plays Ancient and Modern move from the eighteenth century to the present day, Bard is the story of the 'Welsh Shakespeare, ' Thomas Edwards, aka Twm O'r Nant, a brick-layer, furnace-builder, bankrupt and write of 'Interludes, ' an early form of play. Twm robustly attacked the corruption of the day but his attacks were ignored by the authorities and the academics, for Twm wrote exclusively in Welsh. Bard puts Wales's own 'Shakespeare' on stage for the first time. A second rebel of the time was one Edward Williams, aka 'Iolo, ' a stone-mason, and, like Twm, a supporter of the French and American revolutions. Iolo was one of the finest scholars of the age, and one of the greatest literary forgers of history too He tricked generations of Welsh academics and is not forgiven even to this day. The 'modern' play, Greed, examines contemporary corporation and utility 'fat kats, ' looking into the nature of greed itself. The second play Those Fields of Yellow. traces the course one the most frightful of modern witch hunts, the anti-child abuse hysteria which broke out in the States and then traveled to the UK. This led to the formation of the False Memory Syndrome Society, an effort to defend parents and relations from the wrongful accusations of their own children. This play charters the course of one family and how they deal with the pressures of such accusatio

These scenes from the globe are an odyssey through love, grief, friendship, death, spite, mirth, violence, nightmare and the unknown. They take place variously in fashionable ski resorts in Switzerland; a prestigious language school in Cambridge; an ocean going yacht; a ditch in woodland; David Bowie''s private residence in the Canton de Vaud; the den of a terrorist cell in Holland; mermaids off St David's Head in Wales; the tossing of the caber at the Highland Games in Scotland; all accompanied by tastings from the finest cellars, making for a very heady brew! Armed and Dangerous, the title story of the collection, is a hilaroius black novella on the suthor's military service in the pulverized, beleaguered city of Berlin during the Cold War. The tales are topped off with authentic Celtic Triads and a triumphant Ode to the Welsh Leek.