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

Posted on 05/08/2023 by Bobby Seal

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

Posted on 02/08/2023 by Bobby Seal

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

Posted on 01/08/2023 by Bobby Seal

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

Posted on 23/07/2023 by Bobby Seal

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

Posted on 14/04/2023 by Bobby Seal

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

Posted on 03/04/2023 by Bobby Seal

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

Posted on 30/03/2023 by Bobby Seal

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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Resurrection River by Pete Evans

Posted on 22/01/2023 by Bobby Seal

Book Review – January 2023 The Alun is a river of tranquillity, of droughts, floods and trade; fortunes made and lost. At times it doesn’t exist at all and yet at the same time it is two rivers! For anyone … Continue reading →

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Edging the City by Peter Finch

Posted on 19/01/2023 by Bobby Seal

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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Gathering of the Tribe: Landscape by Mark Goodall

Posted on 13/01/2023 by Bobby Seal

Book Review – January 2023 … a personal selection dredged from years of seeking out and listening to obscure and difficult music; music that is profound but which was made for reasons which the creators and performer are often at … Continue reading →

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