Daryl Leeworthy – författare

Published to celebrate Elaine Morgan’s centenary, this informative biography restores Morgan’s reputation and establishes her significant place in writing from Wales. It outlines her early days living only just above the poverty line in the Rhondda in a Labour/Communist steeped family, before reading English Literature at Oxford.The book details Morgan’s early career in (left-wing) adult education, her marriage to an International Brigade veteran, her continuing political engagement and her success as a writer of stories and journalism. This brought her to screenwriting and adaptations for tv, and in particular the BBC. In this her career ran in parallel with fellow Rhondda author Gwyn Thomas, and Leeworthy traces their rise and the reasons behind it.Morgan went from being among the very first women writers for radio and television to one of the pre-eminent screenplay writers in the UK. She was truly a pioneer, on whose shoulders today’s female television writers stand. She is perhaps best known for her adaptation of How Green Was My Valley, and her original screenplay, Lloyd George. Morgan spent forty years screenwriting before a radical move into anthropology and ethics, with Descent of Woman and The Aquatic Ape. These books made her even more famous and more influential, and she spoke about them at conferences around the world.Despite her enormous international reputation Morgan was essentially a Valleys person and the book explores the importance of Welsh identity to her. She was an early campaigner for Welsh language education, and became a Western Mail columnist towards the end of her life, a commentator on Welsh affairs, both political and social.Richly detailed, with never before seen photographs, this biography is essential in understanding the life and work of this important writer.

A Little Gay History of Wales tells the compelling story of Welsh LGBT life from the Middle Ages to the present day. Drawing on a rich array of archival sources from across Britain, together with oral testimony and material culture, this pioneering study is the first to examine the experiences of ordinary LGBT men and women, and how they embarked on coming out, coming together and changing the world. This is the story of poets who wrote about same-sex love and translators who worked to create a language to describe it; activists who campaigned for equality and politicians who created the legislation providing it; teenagers ringing advice lines for guidance on coming out, and revellers in the pioneering bars and clubs on a Friday and Saturday night. It is also a study of prejudice and of intolerance, of emigration and isolation, of HIV/AIDS and Section 28 – all features of the complex historical reality of LGBT life and same-sex desire. Engaging and accessible, absorbing and perceptive, this book is an important advance in our understanding of Welsh history.

This book tells the compelling and revealing story of the women's movement in modern Wales. Its panoramic sweep takes the reader on a journey from the nineteenth-century campaigns in support of democracy and the right to vote, and in opposition to slavery, through to the construction of the labour movement in the twentieth century, and on to the more recent demands for sexual liberation and LGBTQ+ rights. At its core is the argument that the Welsh women's movement was committed to social democracy, rather than to liberal or conservative alternatives, and that material conditions were the central motivation of those women involved. Drawing on an array of sources, some of which appear in print for the first time, this is a vivid portrait of women who, out of a struggle for equality, individually and collectively, became political activists, grassroots journalists, members of councils and parliaments, and inspirational community leaders.

In this bold, controversial book, Daryl Leeworthy takes a fresh and provocative look at the struggle through radical political action for social democracy in Wales. The reasons for Labour’s triumph, he argues, lay in radical pragmatism and an ability to harness lofty ideals with meaningful practicality.

Gwyn Thomas was born, the last of twelve children, into a Rhondda mining family in 1913. After a childhood marked by the strikes of the 1920s, he went off to study Spanish at Oxford University and in Madrid, where he met the poet Federico Garcia Lorca and witnessed the turmoil which would lead to the Spanish Civil War. On his return, amidst the economic mire of the 1930s and his own burgeoning teaching career in Barry in the 1940s, he picked up his pen and began to write. For more than forty years, until his death in 1981, as novelist, screenwriter, master of the short story, and prizewinning playwright, Gwyn Thomas delivered compelling and comedic portraits of his world of South Wales. His creative genius earned enduring fame on both sides of the Atlantic and on both sides of the European Cold War divide. As a provocative and insightful broadcaster, he embraced the possibilities of radio and television, whilst leaving his hosts and guests alike in fits of knowing laughter. This landmark biography, enriched with unrivalled access to private papers and international archives, tells the remarkable story of one of modern Wales's greatest literary voices.

Since the end of WWI, one party has held the momentum of politicaland social change in south Wales: the Labour Party. Its triumph wasnever fully guaranteed. It came quickly amidst a torrent of ideas,actions, and war. But the result was a vibrant, effective and long-lasting democracy. The result was Labour Country.In this bold, controversial book, Daryl Leeworthy takes a fresh andprovocative look at the struggle through radical political action forsocial democracy in Wales. The reasons for Labour's triumph, heargues, lay in radical pragmatism and an ability to harness loftyideals with meaningful practicality. This was a place of dreamersas well as doers. The world of Arthur Horner and Aneurin Bevan.And yet, as the author shows, this history is now over. Althougha trajectory leads from the end of the Miners' Strike both tothe advent of devolution and the circumstances that led to theBrexit vote in 2016, these are exits from Labour Country, not acontinuation. Sustained by a powerful synthesis of scholarship andoriginal research, passionate and committed, this book brings thecubist epic of south Wales and its politics to life.