Dai Smith - Böcker

This work forms part of the tenth-anniversary celebrations of the University of Glamorgan. It traces the institution's development from its beginnings as the South Wales and Monmouthshire School of Mines to its present-day status as a university and sets that history in the context of the university's environment. The opening chapter by Meic Stephens looks at the growth of Pontypridd from a hamlet into an industrial town and describes the cultural and social context leading up to the opening of the School of Mines. This is followed by studies from Peter Harris on the period from 1913-39 and Basil Isaac on the period 1939-92. There are also chapters on adult education (Keith Davies), the social and economic context in which the university now operates (David Adamson), and an epilogue by Adrian Webb which outlines the institution's present role and its future mission.

This handsome, full colour book celebrates forty years of the work of Ken Elias, from student op art/collage to current work made in response to poetry. As an artist Elias is something of a conundrum. Born and once again based in Glynneath, he draws extensively on his locale and on his childhood in the Fifties, in particular his extended family and his frequent cinema going. Yet he is almost unique in Wales in his continuing adherence to Pop Art and collage. Taught by John Selway, Terry Setch and Ernest Zobole at Newport Art College in the 1960s collage and photomontage remain at the centre of his work, including his paintings: flattening perspectives, unexpectedly contrasting images, producing social and political commentary, assimilating a modernist urban artform into a Valleys context. Elias' is an art which blurs the edges of reality in a similar fashion to cinema. It asks the viewer to look afresh at the familiar and the domestic, and to question their own reality. The book, which accompanies a touring exhibition, includes five essays by leading commentators in the field: Hugh Adams - 'Who are you to decide what reality is?' Anne Price-Owen - 'Ken Elias and the Hidden Persuaders' David Briers - 'Ken Elias and the Art of Photomontage' Jon Gower - 'Going to the Pictures' Ceri Thomas - 'Ken Elias: An Overview'

Using a rich array of material from Raymond Williams' hitherto unused personal papers, diaries, letters, unpublished novels and stories, notebooks, work drafts and fragments, this title takes us through the formative years on the Welsh Border as the son of a railway signalman and his wife, on to Cambridge in 1939 and War service in Normandy.

Beti, the beautiful daughter of a pub landlord, is pursued by two men: Llew, her aggressive, red-haired cousin, and Evan, the miller and would-be poet. She has to make a choice but it's not her future alone that depends on her decision. She and Tanygraig are positioned precariously on borders of class, nation, language, and changing times.

A Rope of Vines - Journal from a Greek Island is a beautiful and personal account of the time spent by Brenda Chamberlain on the Greek Island of Ydra in the early 1960s. Sea and harbour, mountain and monastery, her neighbours and friends are unforgettably pictured. Joy and woe are woven fine in this record.

Presents the story of Michael Caradock, a writer whose life has ended violently on an isolated Welsh island. This book follows his protected Welsh childhood, his crucial first encounters with sex, his literary success in London and his final withdrawal to Wales.

Dream On is a composite novel: part black comedy and flashlight noir thriller, part meditation on the stories that connect up the frayed wires in the business of living.

A white-knuckle fiction ride through the South Wales Valleys during the 20th century. Power, sex, money and ambition all twist through the pages as Smith creates a feast of intellectual and physical provocation stories that send a shudder of fearful recognition through to the reader.

The Crossing bridges the past and the present andconnects Wales with America, as it tells of coal ownersand coal workers in the age of great transatlantic linersand fortunes to be made.At its heart is a father’s search for his daughter inWelsh valleys no longer proud, where creaming offregeneration grants has replaced coal mining as away of life and development parks now stand whereonce did pit head wheels. It follows a lifetime’s searchfor lost love, the sinking of a great ship in a great war,misplaced family and forlorn hopes where individuallives are shaped and fated in the shadow of modernityand the cold hand of progress.This brave, bold and challenging work conjures a vividcast of characters into being and offering – with readyvim and ample vigour – their compelling, complex andultimately telling story.

This edition celebrates the centenary of Williams's birth.RAYMOND WILLIAMS (1921-1998) was the most influentialsocialist writer and thinker in post-war Britain. Now, for thefirst time, making full use of Williams's private and unpublishedpapers and by placing him in a wide social and culturallandscape, Dai Smith, in this highly original and much praisedbiography, uncovers how Williams's life to 1961 is an explanationof his immense intellectual achievement."It is Smith's ambition to set out the lonely, almost monastic pathRaymond took through childhood, army and adult educationtowards his deserved eminence. But the biographer's greatestachievement is to find his own discerning route through whatoften seems to be a jungle of contradiction... This is a worthwhilebook and a very good one."- David Hare, The Guardian"It is a remarkable piece of work and will henceforth be essentialto the understanding of the making of Raymond Williams."- Eric Hobsbawm"Becomes at once the authoritative account... Smith has done allthat we can ask the historian as biographer to do."- Stefan Collini, London Review of Books"Carrying an impressive deal of intensive research lightly... theportraiture throughout is graphic, richly detailed and subtlyshaded... in these packed, lucidly written pages..."- Terry Eagleton, New Welsh Review

Five poems from five poets. The bus pass tour.

In this beautifully written memoir Dai Smith engages and entertains with a personal life and times with the characteristic verve of a writer who has illuminated the modern history of the people of South Wales.

When you come out for the bell aged eighty you have no choice but to employ a late style. This is mine. A mix of deceitfully plain reportage; fictive history and fictional forays into the past; personalised reflections and more shaded perspectives from others; some poetry and polemics; glances of delight at the playfulness of sport and the charisma of personalities; taking a stance, whether orthodox or southpaw, in the courage to live with what you are given no matter what is put in front of you. And the illusion of random repetition, the rat tat tat bam bam, before any change in the angle of attack. But that's enough bobbing out of reach, jabbing and sliding away with pretty dancing around the ring.One of Wales's most successful interpretive voices of a generation castshis mind back to the preceding decades to offer a retrospective take onthe legacy of the Labour party in Wales in a genre-defying work writtenin Dai's inimitable signature style.