Alexander Cordell – författare

Set in the ironmaking town of Merthyr Tydfil, The Fire People is the story of Dic Penderyn who in 1831 became the first Welsh Martyr of the working class. Hanged for a crime that he did not commit, his story is told in this powerful novel which describes the events which took place during the famous Merthyr Tydfil riots of 1831.

Britain in the mid-1980s is a country in the grip of a brutal fascist regime. There is rioting in the streets, cold-blood massacres by extremist political groups, attempted coups by liberating forces based on the continent.Mak Seaton is a senior civil servant whose strengths and weaknesses are bound up in the view that his duty is to the ruling faction. But when Seaton uncovers evidence of corruption at the highest levels of power, even his wealth and position cannot protect him from the Triumvirate.

The people who inhabited the dockland area of Cardiff, know as Tiger Bay,have engraved their personalities on the very air of Bute Street and, under Alexander Cordell''s vivid pen, the streets are crammed again with everycreed and nationality; from priests and nuns to dockers and drunks; boxers,rugby fanatics, concubines and Bute Street ladies. The place comes alive in all its bawdy strength and colour.

The first volume in Alexander Cordell''s classic trilogy of mid-nineteenth century Wales.Set in the grim valleys of the Welsh iron country during the turbulent times of the Industrial Revolution, this unforgettable novel begins the saga of the Mortymer family - a family of hard men and beautiful women, all forced into a bitter struggle with their harsh environment, as they slave and starve for the cruel English ironmasters. But adversity could never still the free spirit of Wales, or quiet its soaring voice, and the Mortymers struggle on even as the iron foundries ravish their homeland and cripple their people. Rape of the Fair Country launched the bestselling career of Alexander Cordell in 1959 and went on to sell millions of copies in seventeen languages throughout the world.

1839. The queen''s realm is in the grip of revolutionary fervour. John Frost, idealisticand charismatic leader of the South Wales Chartists leads his dispossessed followers to Newport. Similar risings are planned throughout the land. these will signal a new dawn: one that heralds the end of opression by a tyrannical rulingclass. But the tide of history is not turning the rebels'' way. And in the depths of his struggleagainst a power that will severly punish him, John Frost finds succour in his passionate and enduring love for his wife.

The raven-haired beauty in the stagecoach looks every inch the French aristocrat she claims to be. But she is nothing of the sort. She is Moll Walbee, and she has left her reputation as a notorious pickpocket far behind her in the slums of Paris.The handsome higwayman who waylays the stagecoach is also not whathe seems. He is Richard Carling, recently dismissed from his regiment and now a Gentleman of the Road. But all he steals from Moll is a kiss...And so on the road a partnership is born that will be refined in trust and betrayal, that will lead to danger and high adventure in England, on the ocean wave, and to a dramatic climax in the wilds of Australia.

Hong Kong in the nineteenth century: a heady, overwhelming mixture of worldly commercialism, moral corruption and Eastern tradition. Into this strange and exciting world, on board the S.S. Mongolia comes Milly Smith, daughter of a Hong Kong tycoon, destined for a marriage of convenience to a greedy financier. But during the course of her journey Milly has attracted the attentions of fellow passanger, the wild and dashing pirate, Eli boggs. Set against a turbulent historical backdrop of Hong Kong''s piracy, the slave trade and the infamous Opium War, The Dreams of Fair Women is a classic historical adventure from the author of The Rape of the Fair Country.

Iestyn Mortymer was sentenced to twenty-one years transportation to the colonies for his part in the Chartist Rebellion of 1839. But three years on, he escaped during the massacre of the British Army in Afghanistan, and returned to Wales under a false identity.His beautiful Afghan lover Durrani, granddaughter of Dost Mahommed, the King of Kabul, having been banished from her country because of her relationship with Iestyn, joins him with their son, Suresh, to begin a new life in West Wales, farming at Cae White, near Carmarthen.However, Durrani''s grandfather has other ideas. His kingship is under threat from Akbar Khan, his traitorous warrior son. To prevent Akbar from seizing the throne, Dost Mahommed changes his mind about his granddaughter''s banishment and now seeks to have young Suresh returned to Kabul, in order for the child to take the throne, with his mother as Queen regent. The Dost''s insistent command finds little welcome among the residents of Cae White Farm, however, and Iestyn prepares for battle...

1848. When the French people besiege Paris, King Louis Philippe flees to England and the French aristocracy run for their lives. Even the Pope deserts the Vatican.Europe is in turmoil. Fearing economic and social collapse, the French provisonal government distractsworld attention by recruiting a Queen voctoria ''look alike'', one madame Alicia Bernard, and then claiming that they have succeeded in abducting Victoria for a trial in Paris for''crimes against the poor''. Alicia Bernard stands alone before the howling mobs, until barrister Andre Pelon is appointed to defend her...

It is the time of the Rebecca Riots when economic turmoil and unjust taxes have left the communities of south Wales in dire poverty with many on the brink of starvation. Atime when young men ride through the night smashing and burning the symbols of their oppression.

The Mortymer family have left their home in the iron-making country of Blaenafon to seek work in the coal mines of the south. Young Jethro Mortymer decides that he must join the rioters in their bitter struggle even as he is tortured by his own struggle to conceal the love he has for the beautiful Mari, his brother''s wife.

THE HOSTS OF REBECCA is a brilliant continuation of Alexander Cordell''s classicstory of mid-nineteenth century Wales which began with THE RAPE OF THE FAIR COUNTRY.

Mei Kayling, a member of the Chinese Red Guard and undercover agent, must lead a column of refugees across the mountains of China into Hong Kong, a perilous journey through villages blasted by an apparent nuclear explosion. It soon becomes clear that the blast was caused by a bomb from an American warship, carried out by a crewmember who has since disappeared; and so Mei must hunt for the missing man, a quest that takes her to the US in her efforts to determine if the explosion was an accident, or was ordered by the Pentagon...

Mostyn Evan and his family, miners turned bargees, wage a glorious but hopeless struggle against rapacious coalmasters, Irish navvies, the ravages of cholera, and the bullying illegal Unions. As they ply their trade between the furnaces of Cyfarthfa and the lush beauty of the Neath Valley, they pray and fight, sing and love, and face each obstacle undaunted with all the stubbornness and exuberance of Wales itself. This is the third instalment in Alexander Cordell''s magnificent saga of nineteenth century Wales that began with classic bestseller The Rape of the Fair Country.

The Long March was an extraordinary feat of human endurance. Lin-Wai, a young doctor newly recruited into the Red Army, is caught up in the breakout of the followersof Mao and their ensuing flight. The marchers struggle on through pain and suffering, under continual harrassment from the enormously superior Kuomintang forces. Through the blistering heat of the Grasslands to the icy-zub-zero temperatures of the Great Snow Mountain, they march. Over a hundred thousand men begin the march. Only five thousand will survive.

The Isle of Man is a Fairy place. If you know where to look, you may still find the little people, as they are called. On the Island lived a Chinese boy, Hu, with his father and his dog Kau Kau. One day Hu''s father said that he was going to Liverpool to bring home a new wife, and a new mother for Hu. But Hu did not want a new mother. So he too his father''s dinghy and sailed away with Kau Kau to the tiny island called the Calf of Man.Nobody knew where he had gone. But the birds and animals came to his aid. With Basking Shark speeding though the waves, the prow rope of the dinghy in his jaws, and with Don Dolphin racing alongside, while the birds flew in clouds overhead, Hu was taken to the Little People. Surely they would help him...SEA URCHIN is a wonderful fable for younger readers from the bestselling author of the Mortymer Trilogy.

James Alexander McAndrew is an artist, a raconteur and a drunk. A roarer who fights his way through every pub in Tiger Bay to become a bouncerin Toulouse-Lautrec''s Montmartre. Yet despite his restless nature and his wild adventures, he still longs of agirl he left behind Wales, the beautful Miss Ellie Kendall.

Set against the background of the Chartist rebellion, LAND OF MY FATHERS is a heartfelt evocation of the greatest iron town in the world, Merthyr, and of the people who made it so: foundry-owners and workers, immigrants, fortune-hunters, idealists, prostitutes and wastrels. It is also the story of one man, Taliesin Roberts, robust, determined, passionate - and of a three-sided love that will never die.

Jim Driscoll, adopted Welshman, one of the greatest boxers who ever lived. Robust, hot-headed, a born fighter - and a legend in his own lifetime. Moving between South Wales, London and America in the early years of thetwentieth century, this is the dramatic story of a true-life sporting hero - a story of fierce pride and burning ambition, but also of human weakness and a lovethat survives against all odds.