Items related to A-z of Wales & the Welsh
Synopsis
This guide is an unashamedly Welsh book about a country that has seemingly by-passed and been by-passed by world events. Yet Welsh people in America greatly influenced its Revolution, constitution, judicial system and Civil War. Wales has given the world one of its truly great 20th-century statesmen, its most successful buccaneer, its greatest pirate, the man who influenced Marx and Engels, the USA's finest president, one of the world's greatest architects and a host of eminent scientists, travellers, teachers and politicians. It provides the story of the survival of this beautiful but largely unknown land, setting out to encourage people from outside to visit and see the country, its heritage and its people, who the Japanese describe as the "gentle folk". This is the story of Wales, the hwyl and the hiraeth, its people, its ancient langauge, its landscape, its lifestyle and culture.
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From the Author
Wales has had a major impact upon civilisation.
The first society to legalise female equality, in the 10th century, codifying the old Celtic laws of the 5th and 6th centuries. These years were known as 'The Dark Ages' in the rest of Britain and Europe, but to the Welsh they are 'The Age of The Saints', when the flicker of Christianity was kept alight in Wales alone in all of Europe. From this time we have the most potent of all Western legends, Arthur and Camelot, The Fisher King, Tristan and Isolde, the Green Knight and the Waste Lands, all built up in mediaeval times from Welsh stories and people associated with Arthwys ap Meurig ap Tewdrig.
Wales has given us 'the modern world's first Socialist', Robert Owen; probably the most important statesman of the 20th century, David Lloyd George (Hitler said he was the one man responsible for Germany losing World War I); a truly fabulous hero, whom Shakespeare called 'not in the role of commen men', Owain Glyndwr; the inventor of modern cinematography, D.W. Griffith; the brilliant architect, Frank Lloyd Wright; the woman who revolutionised British cooking, Elizabeth David; the world's most famous buccaneer, Captain Henry Morgan; the world's most succesful pirate, Black Bart Roberts; the inventor of the = sign, Robert Recorde; the inventor of the Carnegie Process for steel manufacture, Sidney Gilchrist Thomas; the President of the Confederacy, Jefferson Davies; America's most brilliant President, Thomas Jefferson; other American Presidents such as John Adams and John Quincy Adams; the man who started the Boston Tea party, Samuel Adams; the superb poets Dylan Thoas, R.S. Thomas, Edward Thomas and David Jones; the football world's first superstar, Billy Meredith; the greatest rugby player, Gareth Edwards; the wonderful architects Inigo Jones and John Nash; the actors Richard Burton and Anthony Hopkins and so on.
Wales also gave the world one of the the greatest breakthroughs in warfare, the longbow and its archers won the battles of Agincourt, Poitiers and Crecy; and at one time it had the worlds largest industries in iron, nickel, copper, tin and coal. In the first century Dolaucothi Gold Mine was the most advanced engineering site in the world; Wales can claim the oldest university in Europe at Llanilltud Fawr; and its 'Iron Ring' of castles is a World Heritage Site.
The Welsh language is probably Europe's oldest, still spoken despite centuries of oppression by a vastly more powerful neighbour. At one time a pilgrimage to St David's was deemed equivalent to one to Santiago de Compostela. 'One of the greatest shrines in Christendom' is St Gwenfrewi's Well at Holywell, with 1300 years of unbroken worship, unique in Europe. The first Bishop of Rome, the spiritual successor of St Peter, was half-Welsh. In the 18th century the country had easily the highest literacy rate in Europe.
More of the links with Christianity,its survival, and the 110 Welsh saints associated with Arthur are explored in the author's 'The Book of Welsh Saints', published September 15, 2000, of which more details are on the walesbooks.com website.
The main purpose of the book is to tell not just tourists, but the Welsh themselves about the history and heritage of this beautiful, peaceful country, possibly the only country in the world never to have declared war upon another nor to have practised any type of intitutionalised torture. The story of Wales is the story of Britain before the Germanic invasions of the 5th to 8th centuries. The survival of the original British people and their language over the last two millennia is one of the most remarkable factors in world history.
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