Search results for ""University of Wales Press""

The majority of historians have viewed Lloyd George's early career to 1896 as superficial and merely the precursor to his successes at Westminster. Emyr Price provides an altogether different view. Based on original research he asserts that Lloyd George had a very strong commitment to Home Rule (and was the first modern Welsh nationalist), official status for the Welsh language and strong labour legislation and that he campaigned fearlessly against the tide (especially within his own party) to being these measures about. His decision to become a careerist politician after 1896 was the only way he could further the cause of Welsh 'national movement'. Price also investigates Lloyd George's 'Welsh' perception of the major issues that dominated his period of power at Westminster (1908-1922) including Ireland and how these Welsh and Celtic values determined his actions.

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A biography of Lewis Morris, map-maker, duty collector and mineworks supervisor who was one of the foremost literary figures of 18th century Wales.

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"Lazamon's Brut" is a twelfth-century historical poem that includes the first account of King Arthur in English, as an alternative to Norman accounts of English history. This is the study of the period to put Anglo-Norman and Angevin historiography in the context of colonialist and post-colonialist translation theory.

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A collection of essays that uses questions, hypotheses and concepts drawn from postcolonial theory to understand the culture and politics of post-devolution Wales. Beginning with discussions of how Wales as a nation has been understood historiographically, as well as historically, the book focuses in the next section on society and politics in post-devolution Wales. The final section of the volume considers Welsh cultural difference in terms of literature, the mass media, music, drama and the visual arts. Flexible in approach and diverse in their approaches, each contribution aims to stimulate ideas and suggest new ways of thinking about contemporary Wales.

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A critical study of the role of the Welsh theatre in the Welsh language, 1979-1997, with specific reference to how Welsh identity and nationhood is reflected in the experimental work of vigorous drama companies throughout Wales. 8 black-and-white photographs.

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This new and unusual Pocket Guide refers to more than 300 Welsh graves of the famous and not so famous. They are grouped in convenient geographical areas using the current local government boundaries and there is guidance on how to find the graves themselves. The book is not so much about the graves themselves (although where they are particularly notable there are photographs and descriptions) but about the people buried in them. It thus provides potted biographies of the individuals involved and offers some intriguing juxtapositions. So we find the fairly respectable Cynan and Sir John Edward Lloyd buried close to the seriously eccentric John Evans (Bardd Cocos) at Menai Bridge, Joe Erskine close to Arwel Hughes at Thornhill, while Trealaw would be worth visiting to see the graves of Viscount Tonypandy, Tommy Farr, Lewis Jones and Kitchener Davies as well as that of Williams Evans, owner of the Corona pop factory.

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In medieval thought, Mary was a virgin, a mother, a daughter, and a wife, alone of all her sex and yet also continually invoked in order to define femininity in general. Shadows of Mary analyses the figure of the Virgin Mary in medieval theological, philosophical and literary texts in order to understand how stories about her influenced the creation of female characters in both sacred and secular writing. Teresa Reed traces aspects of Marian figuration ranging from Chaucer's Constance and the Wife of Bath, to the medical woman of the English Trotula, Saint Margaret of Antioch and the Pearl maiden. She shows how the rhetorical processes through which the medieval church manifested its ideas of truth are caught up in representational anxieties surrounding the body of a woman, and in Mary's relationship with her shadow, Eve. Shadows of Mary's detailed analysis of the multiple and often contradictory roles occupied by Mary in medieval thought also opens up ways of thinking through the connections between literary representation and social practices. It offers innovative ways for using medieval studies to think through issues that have come to preoccupy contemporary studies of gender and culture.

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Archaeologists excavate structures and objects, but they can and should aim to reconstruct the societies of the past and seek to understand them. Artefacts and Archaeology brings together essays written by leading scholars in the fields of Iron Age and Roman archaeology and material finds in Britain in order to examine the ways in which the study of sites, artefacts and ancient societies are interdependent. Artefacts and Archaeology deals with the wide range of objects produced by the Iron Age and Roman cultures, from ironwork, defences and the Roman army and Roman finds. It emphasises the role of the archaeologist as interpreter of people, not things, and shows how object studies can move beyond pure description and instead attempt to communicate with the past. Individual essays discuss Iron Age and Romano-British religion, the Roman army in Wales, Roman bronze, pottery and glass objects, the Roman economy and museum objects, and the collection as a whole offers a fascinating overview of the material culture of Iron Age and Roman western Europe.

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This book reproduces in colour, with commentary and full contextual discussion, all the miniatures from unpublished illuminated manuscripts of Le Roman de la Rose in the National Library of Wales. A central work in medieval culture, the Rose was among the most consistently illustrated of medieval secular texts. By presenting all the illuminations from all five illuminated Aberystwyth manuscripts the present study enables absorbing comparisons to be made. This is a book that will stir controversy through its scepticism about moral readings of Rose illustrations and through its insistence on an "accidental" element in the interpretative value of miniatures in secular texts. It will interest anyone who studies art and literature, including students of Chaucer - a poet who absorbed the Roman de la Rose to the core by translating it. The reader is first introduced to the narrative and to characteristic sites of illustration within it. The introduction goes on to identify existing published sources of reproductions, and then to argue the crucial role that a grasp of the practical circumstances of production should play in interpreting medieval miniatures. A final complementary chapter formally describes all seven Aberystwyth Rose manuscripts.

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A highly readable collection of seven essays portraying seven influentially significant figures in the fields of religion and society in Wales during the 20th century, namely D. Cynddelw Williams, Timothe Rees, Lewis Valentine, J. D. Daniel, Ivor Oswy Davies, Pennar Davies and R. Tudur Jones. 8 black-and-white photographs.

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In this collection of essays, a group of musical enthusiasts assess the international careers of great Welsh soloists in the context of the national musical tradition. These individual careers are examined against the background of wider local traditions such as the Eisteddfod, religious festivals and male voice choirs. The emphasis of the book will be on the classical and operatic but the sheer variety and perpetually evolving nature of popular music in Wales is reflected in both general essays and in studies of two of the country's most successful entertainers. The book includes detailed chapters of Tom Jones, Shirley Bassey and Bryn Terfel, alongside contemporary music phenomenons such as The Stereophonics, Catatonia and the Manic Street Preachers.

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Eighteenth-century English fictions are full of stereotypical images of Wales and the Welsh, from the popular lampooning of the Welsh as dishonest, credulous and superstitious to the idealisation of Wales as the home of the noble savage and a place of natural virtue and innocence. The Wales of these fictions is an imagined nation, rarely brought into being by the Welsh themselves. Moira Dearnley explores a selection of eighteenth-century texts that have received little critical attention in Wales, even as they record a part of the history of the Welsh people. She looks at both familiar and less well-known authors, from Tobias Smollett to Mary 'Perdita' Robinson, and traces the varied ways in which 'that principality contiguous to England' was represented. Distant Fields: Essays on Eighteenth-Century Fictions of Wales is a pioneering book dealing with a little-explored subject and will appeal to all those interested in questions of nation and narration, the cultural and national contexts of eighteenth-century fiction, and the history and development of fictions of Wales.

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A collection of five scholarly essays presenting a thorough study of the nature of a Welsh identity as reflected in the literature of the Tudor period, with special reference to the chronicle of Elis Gruffydd and the strict metre cywyddau of Dafydd Llwyd of Mathafarn.

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If human rights express the equal claim of every person to the recognition and protection of their vital interests, they necessarily assert universal obligations of justice that cross borders. In this book, Sharon Anderson-Gold asks whether there is a normative consensus on human rights and articulates the role of a cosmopolitan or global community in shaping the theory and practice of international politics. She considers several important works in the field of universal human rights and discusses whether a cosmopolitan system of law is a necessary condition for the stable association of nation states. Cosmopolitanism and Human Rights presents an ethical foundation for the idea of human development and attempts to demonstrate the normative character of universal human rights. It claims that Kant's idea of a federation of nations based upon principles of international right remains highly relevant to contemporary aspirations for global justice, and concludes by suggesting that a 'cosmopolitan community' is the locus of a global democratic order and is the necessary framework for the maintenance of human rights.

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This work examines the Welsh acting tradition. Although lacking a metropolitan centre, a culture developed in which both chapels and schools encouraged recitations and performances. Each chapter evokes an actor and assesses their work, career and contribution made to film and theatre in general.

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This text aims to cover four main area of change during the 20th century: the political scene, social changes, economic developments and culture and educational features.

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Perhaps the key word of the 1930s was 'crisis'. The comfortable world of a bourgeois world had been declared shattered for ever by the Great War: and yet, between recurrent nightmares and dark forebodings for the future, every family continued its individual pursuit of an odd variety of bluebirds of happiness. The Prydderch family for instance, devoted to education and getting on, were very cross when Enid, their youngest and brightest, sacrificed her own promising career in order to marry John Cilydd More, a country solicitor, whom she believes to be a poet of great potential. Now she is pregant. Her aunt Sali Prydderch, particularly yearns for a reconciliation. She approaches Amy Parry, Enid's best friend who is now a County School teacher in the same North Wales seaside town. Salt of the Earth is the third in a sequence of novels which began with Flesh and Blood and The Best of Friends - a sequence which when completed, will have described the processes of growth, change and decay which have made Wales what it is today.

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A study of the history of linguistic thoughts and attitudes in Wales during the eighteenth century, noting particularly the rich contribution of Welsh scholars to developments in the field of linguistics in Europe by raising awareness of the Celtic languages and their relationship with other European languages.

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"These Poor Hands: The Autobiography of a Miner Working in South Wales", was first published in June 1939. It was an instant bestseller, and its fame catapulted its author into the front rank of 'proletarian writers'. B. L. Coombes, an English-born migrant, had lived in the Vale of Neath since before the First World War, but only turned to writing in the 1930s as a way of communicating the plight of the miners and their communities to the wider world. "These Poor Hands" presents, in a documentary style, the working life of the miner as well as the author's experiences in the lock-outs of 1921 and 1926. It demonstrates Coombes' desire to offer an accurate account of the lives of miners and their families, and carries a sincere moral charge in its description of the waste of human potential that is industrial capitalism in decline. Long out of print, "These Poor Hands" has been recognised for over sixty years as the classic miner's autobiography.

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A collection of eight articles, lectures and essays on diverse themes found in Welsh and Celtic literature from the Middle Ages to the 20th century including individual chapters on the work of Sion Cent, Daniel Owen and R. Williams Parry.

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Herta Muller is one of the leading figures in the new generation of German writers. This collection of essays is intended as both an introduction for the general reader and a resource for the specialist. It contains ten previously unpublished short texts by Muller and a biographical outline.

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Contains all Gwyn Jones' short stories, with those from "The Blue Bed", "The Water Music", "Welsh Heirs", and "Selected Poems". This book offers a critical analysis, addressing the literary context in which the stories, particularly the early ones, were produced, and their critical reception.

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The final title of a series, this volume traces the history of the federal University of Wales through a period of vast expansion and the inherent problems of such an expansion. It examines the role the University played in the end of the British Grants Commission, as well as the transformation from small, under-funded colleges in 1939, into one of the largest British universities in the 1990s.

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This volume examines the development and nature of the theatre in Wales since the late 1970s. The essays cover such topics as: the belated recognition of drama in Wales; the continuing presence of a lively amateur stage; and Wales's particular contribution to theatre in education.

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This volume combines a general introduction, an in-depth study of, an interview with, and five original poems by German poet, Sarah Kirsch. Five essays by different Germanists focus on various aspects of Kirsch's work - from the structure and style of her poems and prose to their thematic content. A bibliography and biography are also included in the book.

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A comprehensive bibliography of anthologies and cirticism relating to Anglo-Welsh writing in general, and a more detailed guide to 24 of the most prominant 20th-century writers and the critical response to their work. the 24 author bibliographies are prefaced by two contextual sections, one accommodating collections of imaginative writing, the other a range of general critical and background studies.

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Jawarharlal Nehru played a crucial part in shaping Indian nationalism and in the creation of modern India. His life encompassed the high-noon of the British Raj, but also its collapse and the creation of a Commonwealth of independent states. As India's first prime minister he grappled with daunting internal problems, yet gave his country a clear identity in international affairs. One of the ironies of his career was that the dedicated democrat and social reformer was also the founder of a great, and sometimes autocratic, political dynasty.

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A comprehensive and scholary history of prehistoric and early Cardiganshire. This volume is illustrated with maps, line-drawings and photographic plates. It begins with the geography of the county, its flora and fauna, and traces the slow emergence of Man in prehistoric times. It reconstructs, from evidence much of which has only been recently discovered, the extent and nature of the Roman Occupation, and finaly the slow emergence of the kingdom of Ceredigion, the nature of its economic and social organization and political structures. The coming of Christianity, the settlements of the Saints and their priceless heritage, are also explored. The volume ends with the coming of the Normans. This is the first volume to appear in the County History which is being prepared by the Cardiganshire County Historical Society. The completed history will consist of three scholarly volumes designed to present the history of the ancient county from the beginning to the present day. Volume 2: "Medieval and Early Modern Cardiganshire", edited by Professor J. Beverley Smith and Volume 3: "Cardiganshire in Modern Times", edited by Professor Ieuan Gwynedd Jones and Professor Geraint H. Jenkins are in preparation and will follow at regular intervals.

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The subject of the origins of the French Revolution is one of the most important and controversial themes in European history. This fresh critical appraisal begins with a masterly exposition and assessment of recent scholarly debate on the subject, followed by a lucid analysis, supported by documentary evidence, of the multiple stresses which undermined the Old Regime. The author concludes that a revolution was unavoidable because the Old Regime was incapable of reforming fundamental defects in its political structures, but it was the contingent circumstances of 1788-9 that made the Revolution unexpectedly radical.

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The story of an ambitious Norman-Welsh priest who wrote, often angrily and always vividly, about his troubles and about the people and places he knew. His books provide the most detailed evidence and the shrewdest insights we have into twelfth century Wales, its social customs, its agriculture, its leading figures and its religious life.

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At the present day the science of geology is being studied more thoroughly and by more people than ever before, its advance has never been more significant. Obviously it is of the first importance that its nomenclature and terminology - growing all the time - should be clearly understood and appreciated; yet it is just here that study and publication have not kept up with the general progress. A book of this kind is therefore needed, and the present one has claims to be a pioneer. Some fifteen hundred names and terms have been carefully selected for critical consideration, a special feature being the copious quotations and references which are scattered over the whole field of geological literature (chiefly British), ancient and modern. Many of the more significant works in the history of British geology are thus brought into prominence. The "Dictionary" is meant not so much for occasional reference or for the seeking of the meaning of every out-of-way word; its aim, rather, is to be useful companion', ever ready for consultation and for the provoking of lines of thought and investigation.

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Christine Pagnoulle's commentary provides a detailed study of eight among David Jones's more accessible poems: those pieces in fact which he reluctantly detached from his work-in-progress and released for publication between 1955 and his death in 1974. It elucidates difficult passages, relates them to his other works, whether poems, essays, or drawings, and shows how David Jones's vision of the world in the middle of our century bears on our present concerns. While developing orignal interpretations this commentary also integrates previous critical approaches into a comprehensive overview. It will thus be welcome reading for specialists of David Jones's poetry, and will also be of interest to those readers who are discovering or still have to discover his work.

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This book discusses Griffith Jones’s High Church ministry and theology, which developed into mass evangelism in Wales. It considers Jones’s background, his life as a parson, preaching in Welsh and educational interests, as well as his determination to remain within the Church of England. Bishop George Bull’s concerns about evangelism, influence of the Prayer Book and Continental Pietism, ‘conversionism’, and the tendency to separatism are also discussed. Jones may not have been an original thinker, but he was an untiring communicator and organiser. There are sections on Jones’s catechising, ‘baptismal covenant’, and moderate Calvinism which influenced later Welsh Calvinistic Methodism. Jones’s advocacy of the Welsh language, especially with English donors to his schools, his links with the SPCK, and collaboration with gentry – especially Sir John Philipps and Bridget Bevan – show the effectiveness with which he participated in the growing evangelical movement in Wales.

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Christianity, in its Catholic, Protestant and Nonconformist forms, has played an enormous role in the history of Wales and in the defining and shaping of Welsh identity over the past two thousand years. Biblical place names, an urban and rural landscape littered with churches, chapels, crosses and sacred sites, a bardic and literary tradition deeply imbued with Christian themes in both the Welsh and English languages, and the songs sung by tens of thousands of rugby supporters at the national stadium in Cardiff, all hint at a Christian presence that was once universal. Yet for many in contemporary Wales, the story of the development of Christianity in their country remains little known. While the history of Christianity in Wales has been a subject of perennial interest for Welsh historians, much of their work has been highly specialised and not always accessible to a general audience. Standing on the shoulders of some of Wales’s finest historians, this is the first single-volume history of Welsh Christianity from its origins in Roman Britain to the present day. Drawing on the expertise of four leading historians of the Welsh Christian tradition, this volume is specifically designed for the general reader, and those beginning their exploration of Wales’s Christian past.

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Swansea University: Campus and Community in a Post-War World, 1945–2020 marks Swansea University’s centenary. It is a study of post- Second World War academic and social change in Britain and its universities, as well as an exploration of shifts in youth culture and the way in which higher education institutions have interacted with people and organisations in their regions. It covers a range of important themes and topics, including architectural developments, international scholars, the changing behaviours of students, protest and politics, and the multi-layered relationships that are formed between academics, young people and the wider communities of which they are a part. Unlike most institutional histories, it takes a ‘bottom-up’ approach and focuses on the thoughts, feelings and behaviours of people like students and non-academic staff who are normally sidelined in such accounts. As it does so, it utilises a large collection of oral history testimonies collected specifically for this book; and, throughout, it explores how formative, paradoxical and unexpected university life can be.

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Introducing the Medieval Ass presents a lucid, accessible, and comprehensive picture of the ass’s enormous socio-economic and cultural significance in the Middle Ages and beyond. In the Middle Ages, the ass became synonymous with human idiocy, a comic figure representing foolish peasants, students too dull to learn, and their asinine teachers. This trope of foolishness was so prevalent that by the eighteenth century the word ‘ass’ had been replaced by ‘donkey’. Economically, the medieval ass was a vital, utilitarian beast of burden, rather like today’s ubiquitous white van; culturally, however, the medieval ass enjoyed a rich, paradoxical reputation. Its hard work was praised, but its obstinacy condemned. It exemplified the good Christian, humbly bearing Christ to Jerusalem, but also represented Sloth, a mortal sin. Its potent sexual reputation – one literary ass had sex with a woman – was simultaneously linked to sterility and, to this day, ‘ass’ and ‘arse’ remain culturally-connected homophones. 'In the medieval world, the ass’s reputation – sacred or profane, derided or acclaimed – was codified in fact, fiction and image. However, unusual its binary nature may seem to the modern-day reader, paradoxical rhetoric was a common feature in medieval beast genres, and the fact that the ass had contesting reputations offers multiple avenues for analysis.' - Read more about this on page 3 of the Booklaunch https://edition.pagesuite-professional.co.uk/html5/reader/production/default.aspx?pubname=&edid=eacd7c66-df5c-4335-86ee-cad05c826bda

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The aim of this book is to explore the characteristics of the medieval dragon and discuss the different and sometimes differing views found in the relevant medieval text types. This study is based on an intimate knowledge of the primary texts and presents new interpretations of well-known literary works and also takes into consideration paintings and other depictions of these beasts. Dragons were designed not only to frighten, but also to fire the imagination, and provide a suitably huge and evil creature for the hero to overcome - yet there is far more to them than reptilian adversaries. This book introduces the medieval dragon via brief, accurate and clear chapters on its natural history, religion, literature and folklore, and concludes with how the dragon is constantly revived - from Beowulf to Tolkien, Disney and Potter.

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This volume tells a story of Welsh industrial history different from the one traditionally dominated by the coal and iron communities of Victorian and Edwardian Wales. Extending the chronological scope from the early eighteenth- to the late twentieth-century, and encompassing a wider range of industries, the contributors combine studies of the internal organisation of workplace and production with outward-facing perspectives of Welsh industry in the context of the global economy. The volume offers important new insights into the companies, the employers, the markets and the money behind some of the key sectors of the Welsh economy – from coal to copper, and from steel to manufacturing – and challenges us to reconsider what we think of as constituting ‘industry’ in Wales.

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Hegel's concept of civil society endorses a market economy and a liberal outlook. But his concept of state culminates in an authoritarian prince who is protector of the constitution. The tensions and contradictions that plague Hegel's liberal society that cannot be resolved by its own civil institutions, motivate his conservative authoritarianism.

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Ideology draws on the social, political and cultural theory of Jurgen Habermas, Gilles Deleuze and Slavoj i ek in order to explore the possibility of developing a 'critical conception of ideology'. The book is concerned with two main themes: the relationship of ideology to the 'real' and the relationship between ideology and the 'ethical'. Although these three writers are often assumed to have little in common, Porter demonstrates a formal homology between them by showing that they all offer an idea of critique that pivots around two central intuitions. Firstly, they insist that a substantive critical distinction can be drawn between the ideological and the real. And, secondly, Habermas, Deleuze and i ek all offer an image of ideology critique that is importantly grounded on ethical terms. By engaging, among other things, with Habermas's sociological work on the public sphere, i ek's forays into popular culture, and Deleuze's analysis of political cinema, Ideology strives to concretely animate how each of these figures provide the critical tools necessary to challenge the kinds of ideological practice that pervade the contemporary social world.

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Focusing upon the horse in Celtic culture, this text should be of general interest as well as of importance within the wider context of horsemanship and military tactics in Medieval Britain and Europe.

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Offers a brief, attractively written account of Owain Glyndwr (1359-1415) and his Rebellion (1400-1415), one of the most exciting and romantic episodes in the history of Wales.

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While electorally weak, the Communist Party of Great Britain and its Welsh Committee was a constant feature of twentieth century Welsh politics, in particular through its influence in the trade union movement. Based on original archival research, the present volume offers the first in-depth study of the Communist Party's attitude to devolution in Wales, to Welsh nationhood and Welsh identity, as well as examining the party's relationship with the Labour Party, Plaid Cymru and the labour and nationalist movements in relation to these issues. Placing the party's engagement of these issues within the context of the rapid changes in twentieth century Welsh society, debates on devolution and identity on the British left, the role of nationalism within the communist movement, and the interplay of international and domestic factors, the volume provides new insight into the development of ideas by the political left on devolution and identity in Wales during the twentieth century. It also offers a broad outline of the party's policy in relation to Wales during the twentieth century, and an assessment of the role played by leading figures in the Welsh party in developing its policy on Wales and devolution.

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‘I tried to contact my own GP last week. I counted 19 redials and 20 minutes on hold before I was able to speak to a receptionist… only to be told that all the appointments for the day had gone. My experience echoes a familiar tale told up and down the country, but just why is it that you can’t see your GP anymore? This book provides some answers to that question…’ UK general practice has reached crisis point. The impact of the Covid-19 pandemic has placed a strain on an already crumbling primary care service, leaving both patients and NHS staff struggling. Seventy-five years after the NHS was created, Dr Ellen Welch lifts the curtain on general practice. She looks back on the history of the profession exploring how the job has changed– particularly since the pandemic – then ahead to what the future of general practice might look like. Why Can’t I See My GP features personal accounts from practicing GPs, including Dr Aman Amir, whose surgery was subject to an arson attack; GP leaders Dr David Wrigley, Dr Lizzie Toberty and Dr Paul Evans, alongside commentator Roy Lilley, and bereaved husband Chris Milligan. Those on the frontline try to answer the question: how did we get here? Is it better overseas? And what can be done to make things better for us all in the future? If you’ve ever found yourself frustrated by the length of time it took to get a GP appointment, then this book is for you.

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