Mary Webb

Gladys Mary Coles


Novelist, poet and mystic, Mary Webb (1881-1927) is an author undergoing revival and revaluation. Her most famous novel, Precious Bane, won the Prix Femina of 1924 and was recently televised. While her work was admired by Rebecca West, John Buchan, de la Mare and others during her lifetime, popular succes came only after her death ...

Mervyn’s Lot

Mervyn Matthews

Mervyn Matthews’ childhood in the thirties, forties and fifties was remarkable even by the standards of the time. Bombed out of his house during the Swansea blitz, he went to live with his maternal grandmother in the Hafod area of Swansea ...

Mila and Mervuysa

Mervyn Matthews

The remarkable - and true - story of love opposed by political ideology. When translator Mervyn Matthews refused to be recruited by the KGB in the 1960s he found himself expelled from Russia and divided by the Iron Curtain from his Russian fiancee Mila Bibikova ...

Occupation, Prizefighter: The Freddie Welsh Story

Andrew Gallimore

’Occupation: Prizefighter’ is the first biography of boxer Freddie Welsh, pound for pound one of the best fighters in history, who died young and broke in a squalid hotel room in Hell’s Kitchen ...

Plateaux, Gateaux, Chateaux

Mary Davies Parnell

Plateaux, Gateaux, Chateaux is the final volume in Mary Davies Parnell’s popular trilogy of childhood memoirs. Having overcome the hurdle of O levels, Mary is now in the sixth form, a period when her horizons are widened in many directions ...

Prince Gwyn

David Parry-Jones

Gwyn Nicholls (1874-1939) is the starting - and perhaps the end - point of any debate about great rugby centres. Playing at a time when rugby developed into the game known today, Nicholls was universally recognised as the outstanding back of his time and a great thinker about the game, both technically and tactically ...

Print of a Hare’s Foot

Rhys Davies

Long before the idea that all biography is fiction became fashionable, Rhys Davies was cheerfully retelling his life story without mention of such minor details as his date of birth, or the existence of brothers and sisters ...

Richard Burton: So Much, So Little

Peter Stead

The story of Richard Burton’s life is well known: from son of a Welsh miner and ward of a local teacher to international superstar. He became as famous for being Richard Burton and husband of Elizabeth Taylor as for the extraordinary acting abilities which made his name ...

Richard Hughes: Novelist

Richard Poole

Richard Hughes (1900-76) is probably best known for his remarkable bestseller about childhood, A High Wind in Jamaica (1929), now recognised as a modern classic ...

Samuel Sebastian Wesley

Donald Hunt


Samuel Sebastian Wesley (1870-1876) is one of the most influential figures in English Cathedral Music. In rewriting the settings of the Canticles he revived devotion to that part of the service; he is also the author of many memorable anthems ...