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‘Real Liverpool’

Published 1st January 2009 by Niall Griffiths.

In population terms, Liverpool isn’t a huge city (it is dwarfed by Birmingham), but it looms colossally in the history (recorded and mythical) of the British Isles, and indeed the world. Real Liverpoolis Niall Griffiths’ antidote to some of mawkish twaddle that has marked Liverpool’s year as European City of Culture. Griffiths’ love/hate relationship with the city of his birth is central to the book. He explores the various facets of the city – its maritime and merchant histories, class divisions, sectarian divides, Celtic influences, and the siege mentality underpinning the celebrated Scouse humour. Nor does he flinch from Liverpool’s dark side: the money from the slave trade, the drugs, the urban blight, the fallout from Thatcherism, the internecine violence. Jamie Bulger, Heysel, Hillsborough, the Dockers’ Strike, the Toxteth Riots, all of these and more are discussed.Real Liverpoolis underpinned by a strong autobiographical element which details the author’s birth and formative years in the city, his movement away from it, the abiding pull it exerts. In addition, Griffiths interviews many people connected closely to the city, from personal friends and family members to artists and workers. From the Wirral to Warrington, Anfield to Everton, Bootle to Diddyland, Griffiths criss-crosses Liverpool by the Ferry and through the Tunnels, from John Lennon airport to the racecourse and down the docks, building a picture of a city which, whatever its faults, is never dull.’Real’ Series Editor: Peter Finch
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‘Real Wales’

Published on 1st January 2009 by Peter Finch.

In this ambitious offering from the Real… series, following acclaim for Real Cardiff and Real Cardiff Two, Finch takes on the alien land he didn’t know was his, until he grew and went to see it: Real Wales. A cotton-wool nation, full of football and big-brother slim-screen television, or a land of demons, where white robed druids would wail at you through a never ending mist?

In muscular, syncopated and witty prose, Finch presents 30 years of journeys through the familiar, the bizarre, and to all those places on the TV weather map he never before had cause to visit.

In a country of small and scattered populations, who are all certain of who they are, and where doubt is a quality none possess, Finch comes across poetry in Merthyr, an abandoned castle in Dinas Powys, UFOs and Waldo Williams in West Wales, Jack Kerouac on the beach at Gwbert, the military at Epynt, bizarre sports in Llanwrtyd, flying gravy in Cricieth, panic on Snowdon, and a stripper at the Royal Welsh.

Whether reading a mountain as Braille or clearing a tent at Hay with one poem, Finch seeks to embrace the permanently stern independence of spirit he sees across the country. Personal but never pedestrian, in a country where the past is so near the surface but can never quite be picked up, he accompanies oddballs and novelists, historians and local experts, to find something usually forgotten in a world of oil-powered multi-national commercial empires and federal enormity: Small is beautiful.

‘Real’ Series Editor: Peter Finch

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‘Real Merthyr’

Published 1st November 2008 by Mario Basini.

About Mario Basini
Mario Basini is a journalist and columnist with the Western Mail. He writes and broadcasts on a wide range of subjects and has presented programmes on BBC Wales, BBC Radio Wales and Radio 5 .

About Real Merthyr
Merthyr Tydfil, seldom can a town of 55,000 people have had such a long and such a varied history. Named after the slaughter of Tudful, daughter of the Prince of Brycheiniog in a time before history was written, site of a Roman fort (at Penydarren, now under the football ground), site of a Norman castle (at Morlais), the epicentre of the Industrial Revolution and the British Empire, a byword for socialism and republicanism, then a byword for the post-industrial south Wales valleys: iron, steel, coal closures, high unemployment, inward investment from Japan.

Present day Merthyr is the result of the industrial revolution (which threw up another martyr: Dic Penderyn) which set the tone of the town in the form of varying degrees of deprivation meant to be ameliorated by fine Victorian buildings paid for by the local ironmasters. Its people (from all over Wales, England, Europe) took on a political mindset which is beginning to change only now. Indeed, Merthyr is beginning to change in many ways, perhaps now shrugging off the weight of its history.

Native Merthyrman Mario Basini gives the town the ‘Real’ treatment, mixing history, myth and personal experience to produce a new, sometimes astounding, view of a place at once representative of south Wales and carving out a new identity for itself. From Dowlais Top and the ironworks to Pennydarren Park, from Lady Charlotte Guest to Johnny Owen, from the Gurnos to the cholera cemetery and from Vaynor Church and the Crawshays to the salami and steamed pies of Basini’s Café, this is an enthralling guide to one of the most important small towns of Britain.

‘Real’ Series Editor: Peter Finch


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‘Real Swansea’

Published 22nd April 2008 by Nigel Jenkins.

Welcome to the breezily resurgent, ´ugly, lovely´ city of Swansea. Once a dynamic port and the metallurgical capital of the world, it was later famous for a vibrant artistic life, which included poets Dylan Thomas and Vernon Watkins, artists Alfred Janes and Ceri Richards and composer Daniel Jones. What does it offer now, in post-industrial Wales?
Brought up in Gower and living in Mumbles, poet Nigel Jenkins takes the reader on a tour of the obvious and the oblique, the monumental and the downright quirky. Fusing civic and social history with auto-biographical reminiscence, Jenkins brings to life a place which mixes Dylan heritage with rugby and football passions and a rare fervour for music; the natural beauty of the Bay and Clyne Valley with the dereliction of the Lower Swansea Valley and the charm of Mumbles; the frenzy of Swansea?s night-life with the tranquillity of its pioneering parks; the lofty Townhill estate, once in the vanguard of garden city housing, with the swanky postmodernism of the SA1 development at its eastern gateway.
Eclectic, gritty, whimsical, there is no better way to discover Wales´s second city – which Swansea’s citizens believe to be its first.
‘Real’ Series Editor, Peter Finch
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‘Real Aberystwyth’

Released 9th April 2008 by Niall Griffiths.

Aberystwyth: two languages, a university, a farming community, a port turned marina, a holiday resort, seat of the National Library of Wales and the Welsh Books Council, home to writers and spies. It is a singular place composed of any number of conflicting and complimentary things, with a medieval beginning, Victorian heyday and contemporary reputation as a cultural powerhouse in the guise of a market town.

Aberystwyth is a fluid mix of long-established natives, large student population, and a colony of those who came and never left. Niall Griffiths falls among the latter and the town and its environs have provided rich material for his fiction. Here he mixes autobiography with topography, aligns the oblique approach with historical report, and contrasts the prosaic with the downright odd. The birthplace of the Welsh Language Society, the home of saints, the playground of writers, crucible of alternative living, Aberystwyth and its hinterland are a remarkable phenomenon. This book is an enthralling picture of a world famous town.

An award-winning novelist, Niall Griffiths is a regular reviewer for The Guardian and a commentator on contemporary writing for a number of magazines.

‘Real’ Series Editor, Peter Finch

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Niall Griffiths

Niall Griffiths lives near Aberystwyth, and has published seven fiction books to date. His 2004 novel, Stump, won the Welsh Book of the Year Award. He has been published by Bloomsbury and Cape and his work continues to receive strong critical acclaim throughout the UK. Niall is also the author of Real Aberystwth, Real Liverpool and The Dreams of Max and Ronnie (Seren) and is a regular reviewer for The Guardian and a commentator on contemporary writing for a number of magazines.

Books by Niall Griffiths
Real Aberystwyth
Real Liverpool
The Dreams of Max and Ronnie

 

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‘Real Wrexham’

Published 4th December 2007 by Grahame Davies.
“Sometimes I read something and it seems to be so ‘right’ it is beautiful – and that is how this short passage seems to me…Grahame Davies is an accomplished poet, journalist and critic and is also fascinated by his home town – and it shows. This book; which seems to me to be part history, part travelogue and part memoir, seems to be the ideal merging of his talents.” Clare Dudman, keeperofthesnails.blogspot.com Wrexham: the Eastern Front of Wales. The place where the tide of Saxon invasion rolled in, hit the mountains and stopped. The place where Owain Glyndwr came to get married, where Elihu Yale came to be buried, and where the giants of English football came to be killed.
This is a border town where landscapes, accents and identities meet, mingle and merge. A place where mountain meets plain, Wales meets England, and the Mabinogion meets Man United.
The biggest town in north Wales gets the ´Real´ treatment from novelist and poet Grahame Davies. Born in Coedpoeth, now much-travelled, he´s still endlessly fascinated by his home town.
Mixing personal experience and memory with history, topography, journalism, and an unflagging interest, Davies looks beyond the town´s workaday image and finds something rather special.
Real Wrexham´s real-life characters include obsessive football fans, an ill-fated racing driver, a soccer-player-turned-TV-psychic, several hard-drinking priests, two high-society lesbians and a werewolf. Among the subject it features are a mysterious massacre, a mining disaster, a tour of Wrexham´s ´Wild West´ and a guide to ´Parallel Wrexhams´ worldwide. Even if you thought you knew Wrexham, this book will make you think again.
The history, communal and personal, which it uncovers is a revelation. It´s a masterpiece of psychogeography.
‘Real’ Series Editor: Peter Finch
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‘Real Newport’

Released 12th December 2006 by Ann Drysdale.

Britain’s youngest city as you’ve never seen it before. Just another Victorian port or an Elizabethan maritime centre? A featureless South Wales town or a growing city on the verge of massive and original redevelopment? The “new Seattle” (Paul Flynn) or a haven for single mothers working the system (John Redwood)?

From the splendour of Tredegar House to the towering presence of the Celtic Manor Resort, from the bland sixties shopping centre to the bizarre centenarian Transporter Bridge, from the decline of the football team to the continuing proud tradition at Rodney Parade, it’s a place full of contradictions and characters. Join Ann Drysdale in her offbeat exploration of Newport – old and new – and its people.

“The prose is often laugh-out –loud, the poetry is always excellently crafted. Versatile in traditional forms, Drysdale has some great pastiche and some wryly moving pieces; it’s a successful contrast with the experimental poetry in Peter Finch’s Real Cardiff books … Drysdale’s book is so essential for anyone wanting to know anything at all about Newport, and such an enjoyable read, that some may hesitate to go there, lest their sojourn prove less amusing and instructive. To Newportians it must be a revelation.”

Tom Cheesman, New Welsh Review, December 07

‘Real’ Series Editor: Peter Finch

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‘Real Cardiff Two: The Greater City’

Published 14th November 2004 by Peter Finch.

In the sequel to the hugely popular Real Cardiff, Peter Finch explores the city further, hunts for the legendary peripherique and discovers rubbish dumps, walled housing estates and dead-end lanes. He walks the coast around Penarth Head and on to Lavernock to find the terminal beach at Sully. With poet Grahame Davies he hunts for the mythical river Canna and uncovers what makes Cardiff Pontcanna media-land tick. With Architect Jonathan Adams he trails where the walls of Cardiff once ran, looking for time vaults and gaps in the city’s space-time continuum.

How did Penarth’s Billy Banks get their name? Why are there so many pubs in Pontcanna? Is it Victoria Park or Canton? Who knows? Not Finch’s mother, that’s for sure. With John Briggs he walks the route of the Glamorgan Canal, mourning the city’s loss. Russell Goodway agrees with him. But he’s lost too, now. In Roath, the real capital of Wales, he finds the Goosler, lost tennis courts and the old road to Cardiff Gate. In the Bay he looks at what went before the new Wales Millennium Centre and what might have been.

Out at Creigiau he finds cromlechau and extant past in a city full of trees and slopes. The Welsh Office is surrounded with salt to keep the demons out. John Tripp has his wake at the Gower in Cathays. There’s a folk-club in the Locomotive along Broadway. Queen Street Station has passages you can’t get to where the Taff Valley Railway still steams.

There are other secrets running inside the overbuilt city. Finch tells us what they are. In Real Cardiff #2 Finch no longer has his nose pressed against the glass. This time he’s inside.

‘Real’ Series Editor: Peter Finch