University of Wales Press

Who are the Queer figures, past and present, who have made, and continue to make, Welsh history?  Discover the diverse array of LGBTQ+ figures influencing Wales – and the world – in an exploration of the household names and hidden icons who have shaped their fields and driven forward Queer representation.   From Jan Morris to Ivor Novello, Kenneth Williams to Callum Scott Howells, Jess Fishlock to Lauren Price, via Terrence Higgins, The Vivienne and Owain Wyn Evans, Welsh people have marked the breadth and variety of Queer achievement. Rainbow Wales is an exciting, inspiring tour of figures from culture and sport to politics and activism, and a jubilant exploration of the rich tapestry of Queer identity in Wales.

Reimagine our relationship with the natural world through the Welsh poetic tradition. At a time of biodiversity loss and climate grief, we need to reset our relationship with the natural world. Cynefin helps us hear the voices of people down the centuries who have, through poetry, expressed a different way of connecting with the living world around us. Carwyn Graves explores how the Welsh poetic tradition offers a different view of nature and connecting to our place in the world, and demonstrates its power to help us address the challenges we face. Find fresh perspectives from themes of grief and loss mediated through snow and the cuckoo’s song, to ecological sensibilities in medieval poems and the generosity of the water that drives the water wheel. In a thousand years of poetry we see the natural world portrayed not as a pristine realm but a human home; bittersweet as well as welcoming. Above all Carwyn invites us through these poems, to encounter the living world - in seagulls and sheepflocks, a lake or wheatfield - not in the abstract but in all its sparkling specificity

Human civilisation was not just created by humans: we had the help of many creatures, and foremost among these were sheep. From Argentina to Australia and from Mesopotamia to Mongolia, just about every country with hills and meadows has adopted and then developed sheep farming as a way of living. And in Wales in particular, sheep played a central role in shaping landscape and culture. Sheeplands outlines the journeys taken by some of these sheep as they voyaged across the world, both by themselves and with human shepherds, from the earliest human settlements to the present day. Along the way, Alan Marshall paints vivid portraits of the roles sheep have played in the development of the modern world, in times of peace and war, and describes how our sheeplands might continue to influence Wales and the wider world in future years.

What’s it like to run away with the circu? ardiff, Wales, 1983. A bunch of university dropouts and unemployed hippies find themselves united by two things: a talent for juggling and a desire to live a different kind of life. They decide it might be fun to juggle their way out of the rat race by founding a circus, which they call ‘NoFit State’. How does this group grow from its lowly origins as buskers on the city streets to become one of the most admired and respected contemporary circuses in the worl? tephen Glascoe, a member of NoFit State’s amateur community group ‘Splott State Circus’, takes us behind the scenes of the drama, stress and joy of a radical modern circus. Based on in-depth interviews with the founders of the circus and many others who have been part of its history, Circus Rebels charts the challenges and triumphs of underdogs turned Welsh creative powerhouse.

During an age of extreme gender polarisation when women were confined to the domestic sphere, Sarah Jane Rees (1839–1916) from Llangrannog, better known by her bardic name Cranogwen, won high esteem as a poet, lecturer, journal editor, preacher and temperance campaigner. She also succeeded in her aim of inspiring other Welsh women to overcome class and gender barriers and enter the public sphere, and was hailed as a pioneering forerunner of the ‘New Woman’. This biographical volume follows her through the various stages of her career from early years as a sailor, showing how an underprivileged woman succeeded in winning such influential renown. New light is also thrown on her homosexual love life, and her progressive views on gender – ‘gender difference is nothing’, she proclaimed in 1888. The Welsh-language version of this volume, entitled Cranogwen, won the Wales Book of the Year award for creative non-fiction in 2024.

How does an adopted person construct their identity? In this collection of essays, Ben Wildsmith relates the key events of a turbulent life and considers the factors that shaped his nature.  Examining notions of culture, belonging, authenticity and family, Whose Song to Sing? takes us from 1970s Birmingham to South Wales in the 2020s, via America, Australia and Thailand.  Wildsmith offers an adoptee’s take on society – ironic and occasionally caustic – as he struggles to carve out a space within it. As family life disintegrates, he seeks refuge in culture, always returning to the songs and stories of the Valleys, the gift of his adoptive grandfather.  We follow a path from childhood privilege to addiction and despair, before the healing power of community offers a route to happiness.  Unflinching and frequently comic, Whose Song to Sing? shows how establishing a viable identity from uncertain materials can be a creative act, and a life’s work.

The reign of James II was a dramatic failure in Wales. He became King when Welsh loyalty to the crown and church was strong. But his attacks on the church and his own adherents in Wales meant that loyalty to him quickly drained away. James’s treatment of the Welsh gentry, lawyers and politicians stimulated a spirit of opposition that strengthened as his Catholicising policies became more strident. Clergy members were at the forefront of resistance to the King; Bishop William Lloyd of St Asaph became one of the conspirators who sought to overthrow James and replace him with William of Orange; and, when it came, the Revolution of 1688 was much more turbulent in Wales than in England. This comprehensive study of a ruined reign shows the ways in which opinion turned against James in Wales, providing an account of a neglected period in Welsh history.

When and how did we humans lose our connection with nature – and how do we find it agai? atthew Yeomans seeks to answer these questions as he walks more than 300 miles through the ancient and modern forests of Wales, losing himself in their stories (and on the odd unexpected diversion, too). Return to My Trees weaves together history and folklore with tales of industrial progress and decay. On his journey, he visits landmarks that once were home to ancient Druids, early Celtic saints, Norman Lords and the great mining communities that reshaped Wales. He becomes immersed in the woodlands that inspired the country’s great legends. At one point he even stumbles upon a herd of television-watching cows. As Yeomans walks, he reflects on these woods’ uncertain future, his own relationship with nature and the global problems we need to solve if humans are to truly make peace with the natural world. from tree-planting in ways that are actually beneficial to the environment and local communities to embedding the value of nature into our financial and economic systems. The result is a fascinating and funny adventure that offers insight into the past, present and future of Wales’s woodlands and shows what the rest of the world can learn from them.

This study presents an analysis of the Welsh Liberal Party under the leadership of Emlyn Hooson. It begins with an overview of the period prior to Hooson’s 1962 by-election win in Montgomery, following the death of Clement Davies, and the first section describes Hooson’s leadership of the Liberal Party of Wales, his recognition that the organisation was fundamentally flawed and that it needed to be reorganised. The solution was a root and branch reorganisation and  the formation of a new state party, which would be federated to the British Liberal Party but separate in its functions and leadership. The second section details Hooson’s steering of the party through chapters on the organisation, policy formation and the electoral record. The book comprises the first in-depth description of the Welsh Liberal Party during a tumultuous time in Welsh politics; recognising how current Welsh political historiography has sidelined the Welsh Liberals in favour of Plaid Cymru and Labour, it re-evaluates the Liberals’ position during the period and Hooson’s role.

What does ‘home’ mean? Is it where you come from, or is it somewhere that you have to create for yourself, building brick by brick on the ruins and treasures of everything that has gone before? In this compelling memoir, Gosia Buzzanca tells the story of a young woman who leaves Poland at the age of nineteen in search of a bigger life, hoping to leave the traumas of her teenage years behind her. After studying in England, she finds a rich new tapestry of experience awaiting her in Wales, with intertwined threads of love and literature, hope and despair. Motherhood brings new joys, but the pain of the past must be faced before this new life by the seaside can truly feel like home.  With the fearless honesty of a poet, Gosia offers her account of an extraordinary ordinary life where every flavour is tasted, every moment lived to its fullest. This story of a lifelong quest for home will call to anyone who has ever felt lost or incomplete, and who yearns to find a place where they belong.

The British economy altered radically between 1934 and 1947. Some of the most dramatic changes were in Wales as its struggling private-sector-led economy was supplanted by one dominated by the state. Initial changes were barely noticeable as pre-war rearmament had little impact on its economy and labour market – yet wartime demands for munitions and raw materials prompted the state to govern an all-encompassing mobilisation that upended its relations with business and eliminated unemployment. New factories employed many thousands of people, agriculture was modernised and metal manufacturing thrived, although coal mining remained mired in crisis. As the war ended, lessons learnt during the conflict helped guide the government as it reconverted the economy to peacetime while retaining a dominant role. This book is the first to fully set out and explore these linkages in Wales between government planning, workplaces and their employees.

Joseph Harris, elder brother of the methodist preacher Howell Harris, made important contributions to the sciences and public life of Great Britain in the eighteenth century. A protégé of Edmond Halley and an apprentice to globe and mapmakers, Harris made a lasting impression on some of the most illustrious scientists of his day, contributing to our understanding of astronomy, longitude, navigation, instrument making and optics. And, as assay master at the Royal Mint, he influenced the standardisation of weights and measures, and became a confident of politicians, Prime Ministers and Chancellors of the Exchequer. His essays on our monetary system still impact on political structures today. Remarkably, Harris also found time to make astronomical observations and teach navigational techniques for the Royal Society, and in 1761 was the only man in Wales to record the Transit of Venus.

Explores why Dafydd Elis-Thomas, the leader of Plaid Cymru, the Welsh Nationalist party, didn?t believe in nationalism and how this changed Welsh politics. Lord Dafydd Elis-Thomas of Nant Conwy is one of the most outstanding Welsh public figures of the last fifty years. His political career spans from his first election as MP for the Welsh Nationalist Party in 1974 at the age of 27, to May 2021 when he finally retired after twenty-years of service as a member of the Senedd.  At different stages in his career, he was branded a maverick, an intellectual acrobat and political chameleon, a terrorist for his interventions in Northern Ireland, and a traitor for opposing nationalism. As the first Presiding Officer of the National Assembly for Wales he helped stabilize the new institution and embedded devolution in its first tentative decade. His career has often been marked by controversy. This is what makes his story remarkable, just as his political life has proved to be unpredictable. Both controversial and magnetic, the life and thought of Elis-Thomas is captured in this biography.

This ground-breaking study explores the rise of a Welsh elite of administrators and military figures in the generations after the Edwardian Conquests of 1277–88. It shows how a ministerial aristocracy had developed in the Age of the Princes, before the Edwardian conquest threatened to impose English colonial administrations throughout the land. However, close documentary analysis reveals that Edward I (d.1307) emerged in his later life not as the vindictive conqueror of most accounts, but as a ruler dependent on Welsh support, ready to listen to and remedy Welsh grievances, and to encourage the revival of a Welsh governing class. In addition, the book includes the first detailed study of scores of members of that class throughout Wales in the first half of the fourteenth century. It concludes by exploring the mid-century crises that shook the Welsh establishment and set them on the road to the Glyn Dwr rising of 1400.

What can one Welsh hill farm tell us about how we can help nature to thriv? n recent times, farming has often been viewed as harmful to nature and the environment, causing friction between those wanting to protect wildlife and the farmers whose livelihoods depend on upon the land. Conservationists and governments frequently propose well-meaning ideas and policies to enable farming and conservation to work together, but all-too-often these do not have the intended results. At the heart of this is a lack of understanding about the realities of farming life and managing the land for nature. In this captivating debut, conservationist David Elias explores a farm in the Eryri (Snowdonia) National Park and unpacks what it shows us about the gritty reality of trying to reconcile hill farming and caring for nature. Visiting through the seasons, he forms a deep relationship with the land and the people who work it, coming to understand their particular way of life, history and concerns about the future. It is also a farm rich in nature and he brings his experienced eye to how its habitats and wildlife have been shaped by changing farming practices over the generations. Through lyrical prose and first-hand conversations with farmers, Elias also shows what current government policies have achieved – or not achieved – and why it is so important for us to understand what it really takes ensure farming families remain on the land while simultaneously allowing nature to flourish.

The elemental pull of water is irresistible, whether it’s to bathe, swim, shower, splash about, sail or simply paddle. We are drawn to it not just for pleasure but for its healing and wellbeing benefits. Destinations, from holy wells to mysterious lakes and enchanted rivers, also have spiritual meaning and are shrouded in myths and folklore. In The Water Remedy, Clare Gogerty offers a guide to some of the best places in the UK to enjoy being with water, inspiring us to see beyond its day-to-day domestic use so that we can benefit from its spiritual and restorative powers. Discover the difference that our rivers and seas, lakes and springs, wells and waterways can all make to our wellbeing