2001 A Year in Wales

Patrick Hannan

The sound of laughter is rarely far away as Patrick Hannan watches the events of 2001 unfold and describes them in this chronicle of a year in Wales. The result is a revealing picture of the kind of country Wales now is, its obsessions, its ambitions, its divisions, and the nature of the people who run it or want to run it …

A Useful Fiction: Adventures in British Democracy

Patrick Hannan

“Essential reading for all with an interest in the affairs of Wales.” Cambria, 2009

“Many enjoyable insights”, David Cornock, BBC’s Welsh parliamentary correspondent.

In A Useful Fiction political broadcaster Patrick Hannan provides a punchy commentary on how the mere question of devolution is influencing all areas of political debate. The make-up of Britain has seen far-reaching change in the last ten years. Yet do the British understand these changes? Or rather do the English? Devolution in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland has sharply focussed the question there, but in metropolitan England there is only a gradual realisation that the English are affected too …

 

Commons Knowledge

Paul Flynn

Most MPs do not achieve the great offices of State; some do not aspire to them. As backbenchers they have an influential role in the making of legislation, the conduct of government and the welfare of their political party. Commons Knowledge makes the case for the active, rigorous backbench MP. From taking the oath to resigning, it offers advice for new and veteran backbenchers alike …

Plaid Cymru: The Emergence of a Political Party

Laura McAllister

In the first full-length study of its kind, Laura McAllister portrays the emergence of Plaid Cymru in the post-War world from its origins as a disparate association of campaigners and activists to its current status of fully-functioning political machine…

Poor Man's Parliament: Ten Years of the Welsh Assembly

Martin Shipton

After a decade of devolution 6 out of 10 Welsh voters don’t know which parties form the Welsh Assembly Government. Poor Man's Parliament seeks to explain why the hopes of 1999 failed to materialise and why the National Assembly has yet to  capture the nation’s imagination. It is written from a pro-devolution viewpoint, though one dismayed by events…

Redesigning Democracy: The Making of the Welsh Assembly

Kevin Morgan , Geoff Mungham

Redesigning Democracy weaves together two important political stories. The first charts the long and often divisive campaign for a Welsh Assembly. The second tells the previously untold story of the devolution battle inside the Labour Party, from the ignominy of the 1979 referendum to the forced resignation of Alun Michael …

Wales Off Message

Patrick Hannan

From Ron Davies’s ’moment of madness ’ to the Lib-Lab pact the new Welsh Assembly has had fraught beginnings. Patrick Hannan scrutinises the sagas of Ron and Alun and Rhodri and Rod, placing them in the complicated context of the organisations and people who set the agenda of public life in Wales …

Wales Says Yes

Leighton Andrews

On 18 September 1997 the Welsh electorate voted for a National Assembly. The slender majority was an enormous turnaround from the outright rejection of 1979, a turnaround engineered by the Yes for Wales campaign, founded by Leighton Andrews …

Welsh Europeans

John Osmond

Welsh Europeans takes a fresh look at the identity and future of Wales as a new century approaches. There is a gulf between the ability of the Welsh people to have any real say over how they are governed and the Quango-driven government they endure …

The Welsh Illusion

Patrick Hannan

Wales has changed almost beyond recognition in the last twenty years, yet many still cling to the romantic image of what it once was rather than cope with the reality of what it has become…