Tag Archives: Wales

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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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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Edging the City by Peter Finch

Book Review – January 2023 Circumnavigating the city and then writing home had been on my mind ever since I’d encountered Iain Sinclair’s walk around the M25, London Orbital, which came out in 2002. But it was the Covid crisis … Continue reading

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The Half-Life of Snails by Philippa Holloway

Book Review – November 2022 The hollowness of the space like a migraine building behind her eyes. The landscape transformed by absence, defined by it. The Half-Life of Snails is a novel permeated by a sense of place. Philippa Holloway … Continue reading

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Westering: Footways and folkways from Norfolk to the Welsh coast by Laurence Mitchell

Book Review – December 2021 The idea was to drift west, to etch a furrow in the map of England and Wales. My plan was to walk coast to coast across the country with some sort of agenda, to follow … Continue reading

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A Garden Village

In 1913 the Welsh Town Planning and Housing Trust proposed an innovative new housing scheme in Wrexham; the first of its kind in Wales. Taking as their inspiration similar schemes at Port Sunlight on the Wirral and Bournville in Birmingham, … Continue reading

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The Polish Embassy

It’s very easy to walk straight past the Polish Embassy in Wrexham without noticing it.  It’s a narrow, understated and not particularly distinguished building on the town’s High Street.  It also happens to be pub called the Royal Oak. The … Continue reading

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The Fairy Mount

For in one sense Faerie represents a species of limbo, a great abyss of traditional material, into which every kind of ancient belief came to be cast as the acceptance of one new faith after another dictated the abandonment of … Continue reading

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The Castle of the Raven King

‘Relic of Kings! Wreck of forgotten wars, To winds abandoned and the prying stars.’ William Wordsworth, 1824 He keeps calling this a thin place which, to be honest, I find a little presumptuous. It’s true that a soon as we … Continue reading

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