Excellent book....interview with 200 people who'd had some prominance in Wales culture, giving chronological shapshots of events of some significance from 1962 up to Wales getting its own Parliament / Senydd in 1997. Eventually, in the first half of the 1970s, these sorts of political aspirations reached their very logical apotheosis. The idea of a “clean Welsh ethnos’ inhabiting the ‘real’, ‘pure’ Wales (mostly its rural part) was born: ‘(…) the establishment of a putative Cymraeg colony in the nation’s interior, a settlement for true Welsh people. Emyr Llywelyn, a leading member of Cymdeithas yr Iaith Gymraeg (…) explored the opportunity of transforming Y Fro Gymraeg from an abstract ideal of place to a defined hinterland for a separate, monoglot region of Welsh-speakers, a singular interpretation of utopia.’ Things have moved on in the language debate in Wales and hopefully they will move on in Scotland too, enabling us to escape what is essentially a 1970s debate and embrace a diverse and pluralistic national language community based on the society of 2023 which recognises that Gaelic development isn’t a zero sum game – and also takes Gaelic development in the traditional communities way more seriously. Superb… deeply-moving… A thought-provoking and superbly-edited book, very balanced, with lots of points of view represented.’ Roger Lewis ― Daily Telegraph

Roger Lewis previously came under fire for calling the Welsh language an “appalling and moribund monkey language” in the Daily Mail in 2011. This is a history of a nation determined to survive during crisis, while maintaining the enduring hope that Wales will one day thrive on its own terms.Apparently, hostilities still exist between myself and Germany. The First World War was declared by England, Wales and Monmouthshire (where I was born and bred), and the peace treaty signed only by England and Wales – so owing to an oversight at Versailles, “Monmouthshire is still at war with Germany”, according to one of the voices in Richard King’s vivid oral chronicle of Wales from 1962 to 1997. Next time I’m in Westphalia, I’d best be armed. Much has changed. Women, prominent in the Senedd from its first days, were not common in public life. It is not mentioned in this book but the custom of women not attending funerals was widespread. Rosemary Butler here gets to serve on Newport Council and wonders about reimbursement. “You had nothing, absolutely nothing. I remember making a claim for 50p for a babysitter. There were huge debates as to whether I should have it”.

Faber’s publicists have secured an endorsement from a heavy hitter from outside Wales. David Kynaston calls this book: “oral history at its revelatory best; containing multitudes.” Its climax, the referendum of 1997, has a thrill to it with its cross-cutting narrative, even when the outcome is known. For a new reader on Wales’ recent history it makes for a roller-coaster of vivid evocation. For this 30-year-plus resident it is known history with a wealth of reinforcing detail and insight. An outstanding oral history, presented with elegance and force. Richard King has put together something superb here. These are the times through which many of us have lived brought to pulsing life so that we can better understand our own. It’s like eavesdropping on the past.

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Richard King, who recorded, collected and edited dozens of interviews with various people from Wales, and then compiled them into this incredible volume, prefers 1962, not 1960 as a beginning of this history of Wales. Fair enough, because this is not a fruit of academic historiography—this is a sort of ‘people’s historiography’, though one executed with austere academic objectiveness and thoroughness. King’s history of Wales starts from one radio lecture recorded and broadcasted by BBC: ‘This history of Wales begins in 1962, with a radio speech delivered as a warning that Cymraeg, and the identity and way of life it represented, faced extinction. Titled ‘Tynged yr Iaith’ (‘The Fate of the Language’), the speech was given in the form of a radio broadcast by its author, Saunders Lewis, the former leader of Plaid Cymru. The impact and influence of the speech have long been debated; what is certain is that Lewis’ polemic contributed to a renewed sense of purpose among those resistant to the language’s increasing marginalisation.’ Then there’s the pantomimic ‘Operation Tân,’ being the police dragnet in the in the middle of the Meibion Glyndŵr arson campaign, a period of history where documentation is obviously scant and an abiding mystery at its heart. Brittle with Relics is a collective story of this historical period told by almost 100 voices, from the 104th Archbishop of Canterbury and a former leader of the Labour Party to Welsh language campaigners, record producers, schoolteachers, firemen, and poets. There are 16 milestones/chapters on the way from 1962 to 1997; every chapter can be read as a distinct story. The compiler-author of the book is a music writer and journalist. The fact that King was born into a bilingual family in South Wales and for the last twenty years has lived in the rural county of Powys explains a lot about his personal intention. He made a book on the history of his country which formed him as he is. Over the subsequent three decades the case for Cymraeg would be campaigned and argued for with an applied fervour. In 1990 Welsh became a compulsory subject for all pupils in state schools in Wales up to the age of fourteen. Garner stayed in a holiday home belonging to friends of his wife to research this magical and eerie book for young adults. The Owl Service is a reworking of the last episode of the Fourth Branch of the Mabinogi, Math fab Mathonwy, the story of Blodeuwedd – a girl made from flowers, condemned to participate in a love triangle, before undergoing transformation into an owl. Published coincidentally in the psychedelic summer of 1967, The Owl Service is a vivid and hallucinatory story, loyal to its roots among the darkness of Welsh mythology.

Richard King got to John Barnard Jenkins before his death in 2020. His politics are laid bare: “all actions are acceptable when performed in the national interest.” King captures the extraordinary quality of his quasi-Nietzschian language: “I was completely transformed, my blood was thrilled and singing, and I was possessed by a compelling ecstasy which was pure love for my country and people.” It is rare not to be engaged by strangers in warm, if occasionally vague, conversations regarding ancestry, local connections, and historical neighbourly relations.The book is a landmark history of the people of Wales during a period of great national change, collecting the oral histories of Cymru and Cymraeg, of the people, place, and of ‘seismic events’ which have shaped Wales through recent history. Language campaigner Angharad Tomos recalls asking her parents about such things as Dafydd Iwan’s songs and the fire at Penyberth (where an RAF training establishment was set on fire by Saunders Lewis, Lewis Valentine and D.J. Williams) and being excited to realize that their explanation constituted somehow an ‘undercover,’ unofficial history so different from the boring history she was being taught in school – which ‘was about the Methodist revival – there was nothing current.’ This is just one example of the ways in which King illuminates a history which I was ignorant of completely. Events of significant magnitude are brought to life by the variety of voices King has interviewed. The flooding of Tryweryn, the catastrophe of Aberfan, the 1979 Referendum, Meibion Glyndŵr and the Miners’ Strike 1984-1985 are all brought to the centre stage and recalled with extraordinary depth. Several themes course through the history, the principal one being the battle for recognition of the Welsh language. King wrestles throughout the history with what Welsh Nationalism means, and every voice has a different answer. Multiple people have different takes on the extent of Welsh nationalism and the role it played in these years, but King leaves these opinions on the table, for the reader to figure out by themselves. It’s very well done. Structurally, this book is a gold standard of how to deliver a chronological history without sacrificing theme or trend. And that seems to me to also be the major weakness of this book. During this period I lived in Newport, Cardiff and Swansea, attended a Welsh university and worked in cultural heritage, and much of this book was in no way my 'lived experience'. It didn’t pass me by that both men do not live in Wales, but I do; over the past 20 years, I have watched young people becoming the lifeblood of the language. This is clear from the rising popularity of Welsh-language schools and in cross-party, non-nationalist independence campaigns such as YesCymru, which is dominated by younger voices, speaking in English and Welsh.