Author Archives: Bobby Seal

About Bobby Seal

Freelance writer, poet and psychogeographer

Final Approach by Mark Blackburn

Final Approach charts the turbulent flightpath between a jetsetting father and a planespotting son. Final Approach is a long way from being the type of book I would normally read and enjoy. I do not share Mark Blackburn’s twin obsessions … Continue reading

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Psychogeographic Review’s Books of the Year, 2023

What is psychogeography, anyway?  My understanding of the concept is three-fold: it is a theory, a practice and a body of evidence.  The most interesting of these, for me, is the body of evidence: the books, works of art and … Continue reading

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Crimes of Cymru: Classic Mystery Tales of Wales – Edited by Martin Edwards

Book Review – August 2023 Macabre fiction has been a particular strength of Welsh writers over the years, perhaps in part inspired by the alluring yet sometomes eerie quality of the landscape. I have to admit I’m a big fan … Continue reading

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Real Dorset by Jon Woolcott

Book Review – August 2023 So it seemed to me that Dorset is ripe for a sort of psychogeography – a literary tradition that in essence is a sensitivity to the meeting point of place and history, finding meaning in … Continue reading

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Brittle With Relics: A History Of Wales 1962 – 1997 by Richard King

Book Review – August 2023 This is a history of a nation determined to survive during crisis, while maintaining the enduring hope that Wales will one day thrive on its own terms. I was looking forward to reading Brittle With … Continue reading

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The Valley

From Unofficial Britain: Journeys Through Unexpected Places by Gareth E. Rees (Elliott & Thompson, 2020): Some factories enter local lore in more subtle ways, especially when they are shrouded in mystery and rumour. In 1966, Bobby Seal, an eleven-year-old boy … Continue reading

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Wrexham Workhouse

Having just read Anthony Trollope’s The Warden, with its depiction of a Victorian church almshouse, and recently discovering that one of my own ancestors, Mary Elizabeth Raley, was an assistant matron at Wakefield Workhouse in the nineteenth century, I felt … Continue reading

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The Flow: Rivers, Water and Wildness by Amy-Jane Beer

Book Review – April 2023 We come from water, and water runs through us. It carries our chemistry and our stories. It shows us more than itself: all the colours and none. We are mostly water for all of our … Continue reading

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The Edge of Cymru: A Journey – by Julie Brominicks

Book Review – March 2023 Like biodiversity, Cymraeg survives, but only just, sustained by the farming community, championed by campaigners, enabled by legislators. A language survey in 2013-2015 found only 24 percent of the population spoke Cymraeg – but that … Continue reading

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Narrow Boat by L.T.C. Rolt

Book Review – January 2023 Not only have these waterways introduced me to the peasant and the craftsman, but they have recaptured for me that sense of place which swift transport, standardisation and ever more centralised urban government are doing … Continue reading

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