Steven Lovatt – författare

Brought to you by Penguin. Birdsong in a Time of Silence is the story of a man rediscovering his passion for birdsong and nature. Narrated against the backdrop of the current pandemic, the book opens by acknowledging the new awareness of birds and birdsong that was made possible by the coincidence of spring and the experience of lockdown. Starting with a portrait of the blackbird - most prominent and articulate of the early spring singers - the book proceeds through ten chapters to explore how birds sing, the variety of singing birds (including the arrival of summer migrants), the science behind their choice of song and nest-sites, and the varied meanings that people have brought to and taken from birdsong - ultimately demonstrating that natural history and human history cannot be separated. In closing, the book reflects on the collective reawakening brought on by this strangest of springs.© Steven Lovatt 2021 (P) Penguin Audio 2021

This edition/anthology focuses on photography, commemoration and reinvention, with particular attention paid to the memories that pass from father to daughter. Photographer MR Thomas writes about the October 1999 day that he shot the iconic group portrait of cultural legends RS Thomas, Kyffin Williams and Emyr Humphreys, at RS Thomas'' home in Pentrefelin, in Gwynedd. MR Thomas recreated the pose and attitude of an historical and historic photograph in the public domain that has come to be known as The Penyberth Three (of Lewis Valentine, Saunders Lewis and DJ Williams, the founders of the Welsh nationalist movement), transforming it into a new artefact, The Pentrefelin Three, which is published for the first time in these pages.

Yvonne Reddick drew on memories of the loss of her father in the mountains, in her debut poetry pamphlet, Translating Mountains. In her memoir published here, illustrated by her partner Jonny Kinnear''s atmospheric black and white photographs, she further probes that loss. More than that, she pitches it into the public global arena by setting her true story on the Instagram mecca of the crash site of the Bleaklow Bomber in the Peak District, where the US reconnaissance plane ''Over Exposed'' crashed in 1948, having previously photographed images of the nuclear blasts on Bikini Atoll. Meanwhile, exploring the father-daughter legacy in relation to the growth of rural rave culture in 1990s mid Wales, ''Bass in the Blood'' by Jodie Bond recounts how she and her brother weathered parties marked by drugs, music, natural beauty and benign neglect, leaving her with magical and yet conflicted memories of her father''s rediscovery of himself, post divorce.