Mark Lawson Jones - The Little Book of Wales

First published 2013

Reprinted 2013, 2014, 2016, 2017, 2020

This paperback edition published 2022

The History Press

97 St Georges Place,

Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, GL50 3QB

www.thehistorypress.co.uk

Mark Lawson-Jones, 2013, 2022

The right of Mark Lawson-Jones to be identified as the Author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without the permission in writing from the Publishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978 0 7524 9297 1

eBook converted by Geethik Technologies

Typesetting and origination by The History Press

Printed and bound by TJ International, Padstow, Cornwall.

Thanks are due to several people: David Osmond and Richard Frame, who have explained to me how great Wales is; Clare Barrett who has given me a love of the Welsh language; my dad, Peter, who helped greatly with this book; and last but not least, my family, who put up with me and my great ideas.

How hard can it be? Its a book about Wales! I said to myself as I put pen to paper to start writing The Little Book of Wales. After all, Im Welsh, I live in Wales, and I love all things Welsh

It wasnt until I started to write this book that I realised how difficult it would be. My greatest fear would be that my Little Book would be nothing of the sort. Other books on Wales run to encyclopaedic lengths not to omit, misrepresent or offend. I would need to remember all the things I love about Wales and put them into some sort of order. So I sat and thought and thought some more and then some more. I would need to write about the diverse and wonderful landscape, the long and exhilarating history, the musicians, poets, writers and great thinkers of their age. I would need to write about Welsh links with the world and 100 other things. It would be quite a task!

A few years ago I started to visit museums, exhibitions and historic sites in Wales with two friends who have a love of history. It wasnt too long before I was mesmerised by my own nation and culture, its history, treasures and language. I would regularly return home in the evening with a jumble of facts, figures and stories, trying to put them all in order and make sense of all this new information. It was as if I had been a stranger in my own land.

There was a reason for this. When I was a schoolboy in the Welsh Valleys, history lessons would consist of learning about the kings and queens of England, the Romans, Normans and Vikings, Shakespeare, Queen Victoria and a bit of the First World War if we were lucky. We never really learned about the great amount of history on our own doorstep.

A quarter of a century later I would learn that the window which I used to stare out of in history lessons overlooked the route of the Chartists, when they marched past on 4 November 1839, calling for votes for ordinary working people. I hadnt been taught about them in school, and far from being an insignificant event in the life of my small nation, it was hugely significant. This last rising against authority to take place in Britain came to a gruesome end in Newport when they met the army.

I also didnt realise that the landscape, with its scars of industry, the sites of long-gone iron works, pit heads and spoil heaps, had fuelled the Industrial Revolution throughout the world, and the now green hills were very different 200 years before.

My trips around Wales continue to give me a sense of belonging. I tried to explain this feeling of Welsh pride, and it wasnt that easy. Luckily, the Welsh have a rather good word for it.

Hwyl (hu:il) is described in the Welsh University Dictionary Y Geriadur Prifusgol Cymru as: A healthy physical or mental condition, good form, ones right senses, temper, mood, frame of mind, nature, disposition. It goes on to say that the word means a journey, progress or revolution. A task completed with gusto, zest and fun.

That was it! I had discovered something quite special.

So, whats so special about Wales then?

Thanks for asking. There is no escaping the fact that Wales is an extraordinary place.

With around 3 million residents, this country with an area of just over 8,000 square miles might seem a rather small place. However, in the league tables of the nations Wales punches well above its weight in many ways. It cant be denied that Wales and the Welsh have had an extraordinary effect on the world.

This astonishing land bordered by England, the Irish Sea and the Atlantic Ocean has produced artists and writers, academics, religious figures, adventurers and rogues to tell the story of Wales and the Welsh. The pages of history are full of their tales.

So, who are these famous Welsh people?

There are lots of them! They include: Richard Burton; Sir Anthony Hopkins; Sir Tom Jones; Catherine Zeta-Jones; Dame Shirley Bassey; Timothy Dalton; Charlotte Church; Roald Dahl; Tommy Cooper; and King Henry VII. Here are some others you might not have heard of:

Robert Recorde (1512-1558), the mathematician and physicist, born in Tenby, Pembrokeshire, invented the equals to sign and the plus sign, which first appeared in the book The Whetstone of Witte, published in 1557. This wasnt an end to the talents of Recorde though; in an extraordinary career, he was also appointed Physician to King Edward VI and Queen Mary, and Controller of the Royal Mint before being sued for defamation by a political enemy and dying in the Kings Bench Prison, Southwark in June of 1558.

A Welshman even invented tennis! At a meeting of the Cambrian Archaeological Association, London, in August 1887, a Colonel Mainwaring made the following statement: I should like it to be entered on record that the now popular game of lawn tennis was the old Welsh game of Cerrig y Drudion. The colonels remarks came at a time when lawn tennis was enjoying a tremendous amount of popularity both in Britain and in the United States.

If that wasnt enough, Welshman Sir Pryce Pryce-Jones (1834-1920) from Newtown, Montgomeryshire, created the first mail order business in the world. Pryce-Jones hit upon a unique method of selling his wares. People would choose what they wanted from leaflets he sent out and the goods would then be dispatched by post and train. It was to change the nature of retailing throughout the world. Florence Nightingale, as well as Queen Victoria and royal households across Europe, bought from Pryce Pryce-Jones. At the height of his success he was selling to America and even Australia, and by 1880 he had more than 100,000 customers.

Mount Everest was named after Welsh surveyor and geographer Colonel Sir George Everest (1790-1866) from Gwernvale, Breconshire. Sir George was largely responsible for completing the Great Trigonometric Survey of British India, which ran from South India to Nepal. The Royal Geographical Society named Mount Everest after him in 1865, ignoring his objections that the name Everest could not be written in Hindi, nor pronounced by natives of India.