Finally our summer holidays have arrived and we are off to France on Sunday (26 July 2009). We are looking forward to it immensely, for all the usual reasons. The beautiful peaceful countryside, the dramatic scenery, the fantastic food and the lovely wine. We are particularly looking forward to some sunshine! We had a good spell of weather in June here in Swansea but since then it has been rain all the way. After a busy year at work for both of us, we need to feel the warmth.
We are driving right down to the south, to Bacares, which is on the Mediterranean near Perpignan, about 20 miles from Spain. It is a long drive but it gives us an opportunity to stay at two of our favourite hotels, Val Moret near Troyes  in the Aube (www.le-val-moret.com)  and Chez la Rose in Julienas in Beaujolais (www.chez-la-rose.fr)  
As always we will be crossing via The Channel Tunnel. This will be our 38th crossing. It is so easy and generally trouble –free, though we have had some memorable delays. But usually you sit in your car, you sway gently from side to side for a while and then suddenly you emerge into the sunshine of France – you hope!
The Channel Tunnel is a wonderful thing, an engineering marvel. It had been talked about for many years. The Victorians talked of a tunnel to match the achievements of the Suez Canal and the Panama Canal. The geology under the channel was checked during the 1870s and trial tunnels on either side were dug in 1881 and within the first year each side had bored almost 2 kilometres of tunnel. But the political will didn’t exist for its completion, especially since there were vociferous objections from the military about the possible compromise to national security that it would represent.
It was over 100 years before it was eventually completed in 1994.
The French developer of the Suez Canal, speaking in Dover in July 1882 said that the one day “England and France would be equally desirous of it, seeing the benefits to both countries.”
Well we certainly see the benefits, for it speeds us so quickly towards our holiday and still represents the perfect cure for sea sickness!
As a result of our holiday I won’t be around for three weeks, so this website will remain untouched until the middle of August. But I am sure I will return warmed and refreshed and ready to develop the website still further.
So thanks for reading and enjoy your own holidays if you have the chance, swine ‘flu permitting of course!

Weddings are full of difficulties. I should know I have been the father of the bride twice. It is a minefield for everyone. Take the issue of presents for example. Today the wedding list might seem mercenary but it takes away some of the nightmares associated with the unwanted duplication of presents – or should that be the duplication of unwanted presents?
Of course it is one of the few times in your life when you can give someone a present of tea towels and a plastic toilet brush and get away with it but other than that it is pressure not pleasure.
Back in 1900 things were much more complicated if you were a local celeb. Not only did the wedding list appear afterwards it was also published in the paper.
What a nightmare! Everyone could see how mean you had been.
It was just like a celebrity magazine. You could study the list closely and see what stuff you betters considered essential for a comfortable lifestyle. You could gossip about it for days down at the workhouse I shouldn’t wonder.
I have been looking at the marriage of Olive Jones and Richard Richards at St. Mary’s in Aberavon in October 1900. It is where Richard Lewis (or Dick Penderyn) is buried, as told in Volume One of Stories in Welsh Stone. They certainly had a much better time of things than poor old Dick. Their lives contained many more things than he ever saw.
The marriage is reported in all its glory and everything they received is detailed in four columns of The Cambrian’s densely packed newsprint.
Never mind the bride’s travelling dress of “Automobile cloth, trimmed with handsome lace and velvet and hat to correspond.” Never mind the empire gowns of Japanese silk. Never mind the “brilliantly decorated” Public Hall in Aberavon where they had their celebratory bash. Let’s look at the presents.
Gosh they had a lot of stuff.
The bride’s family provided the bedroom furniture and a cheque. The grooms family kitted out the dining room and also handed over a cheque. This is the sort of approach my daughters would appreciate.
But after that they seemed to get an awful lot of cutlery, including several “fish carvers in a case.” Now as far as I am concerned, if my fish needs carving the waiter is taking it back, but perhaps their teeth were made of sterner stuff in those days.  You also ask yourself, how many fish carvers does a couple need? We seem to have managed for 37 years together without one but then perhaps we are odd.
It is clear that no middle class household could be expected to manage without a  sardine dish. This happy couple were truly blessed; they had two.
They received a  huge amount of silver.  Nut crackers, claret jugs, sugar basin, toast racks ,knife rests, butter dish, bread platter, serviette rings, picture frames. I am sure they could dine together in their new dining room in the light of only one candle and all its reflective glory – in a silver candlestick of course.
There are bed spreads, vases. Mrs Richards from Hirwaun gave an egg stand. If she was a relative then it was a pretty poor present. Dr Ivor H. Davies from Porth, clearly a man with certain expectations, handed over a silver dinner gong. Someone else gave them a silver-mounted crocodile purse which I suppose the happy couple were willing to share.
Miss Pentland of London gave them a “volume of Kipling”, which I assume was a book, rather than a generous collection of cakes. But who knows?
Miss E. Walsh handed over a pickle fork. Now if she was a child everyone would have smiled and patted her gently on the head. However, if she was the rich maiden aunt then they would all have muttered together in a corner about what a mean old bag she was, before smiling sweetly and fighting to fetch her  another glass of sherry.
Mr T. Lloyd in Africa sent some grape scissors and Mr. T. Evans from America sent a handkerchief but before you start to tut too loudly, perhaps the postage was a bit too steep for anything more substantial.
It is a fascinating piece, a real window into another time and another lifestyle. I am sure it cannot have been much fun for the reporter who had to catalogue all this  household stuff but I am very grateful for the fact that he did so.
It is a huge list and you wonder if any of it has actually survived. Perhaps there is an untouched epergne, stranded in a forgotten box in a loft somewhere. It would be fantastic  if it was indeed so. Perhaps I could borrow it. When I have found out what it is for.

Why does it take such a long time to get out of Wales on a train? It seems to take forever. There are frequent stops as the train ambles across South Wales and the M4, when it is on its best behaviour, can be just as quick.
It makes you realise how impenetrable Wales must once have been and how remote parts of it must have seemed. When the story of Sarah Jacob hit the papers in 1869 with such tragic consequences, people from London would travel down on the train to visit the farmhouse where she sat in bed receiving visitors. You can read about Sarah on page 108 of Volume One of Stories in Welsh Stone. She was of course a curiosity. She provided a glimpse of another world, a primitive alien place into which modern values had not yet reached. Hers was a world that still believed in fairies.
We must never forget either the impact of that other issue. The Welsh were Welsh speaking. To Victorians living in London it would have seemed very exotic that something so odd should now be within easy reach of the capital as a result of the sudden expansion of rail transport. The train might seem slow to us but it was a modern marvel to them.
Wales has always been a different world. I was reminded of this when I went up to London for an English Examiners meeting on Wednesday (11 June 2009).  A great deal of the Welsh heritage is preserved in the peace of the countryside. In London some of the heritage can seemed confined and overwhelmed.  Look at All Soul’s Church in Langham Place.

It is a beautiful church – the last surviving church built by John Nash who developed Regent’s Street. It was completed in December 1823 at a cost of £18,323 10s 5d. It was built of lovely Bath stone and has17 columns and a 12 sided steeple. It was originally derided as a “deplorable and horrible object” but we are much more kindly disposed towards it. The BBC broadcast their daily service from there between 1951 and 1994.
Nash himself is a very interesting figure. Some have claimed that he was born in Cardigan in Wales 1752 but today it is generally accepted that he was born in London, the son of a millwright in Lambeth. But there is certainly a Welsh connection. He spent a long time in Wales as an architect of country houses following the collapse of a business venture. He developed parts of the house on the remarkable Hafod estate near Aberystwyth which was destroyed in a catastrophic fire. I have written about the estate and hope that it will feature in Volume Two.
Nash eventually returned to London and made a huge contribution to the landscape of the capital. He did some work on Buckingham Palace.  Marble Arch and the Haymarket Theatre amongst his work, as well as the Brighton Pavilion. Some of the things we remember about London were left behind by Nash.
All Soul’s is one of them. It is a beautiful structure, and yet now it is overwhelmed by the buildings around it – and there are cranes beyond showing that there are others to come which will cast an even greater shadow.
London has always changed and changes so quickly. When I am there I stand and stare as everyone else rushes around full of business and pressure. It isn’t like home.
Perhaps that is why the train slows down in Wales. We live life at a much gentler pace down here. And perhaps we should be grateful.

Actresses had a bit of a reputation in Victorian times. I can’t imagine that it was entirely fair. There must have been some very serious and talented women on the stage. But the rest were not always taken seriously and seemed to provide professional males with hours of endless amusement and innuendo.
I found an excellent example of this in an edition The Cambrian newspaper from March 1894. The reporter doesn’t seem to take the issue very seriously – but neither did the judge.
The newspaper breathlessly reports a court case from London, under the exciting headline
Mr Melville and The Actress – Alleged Serious injury at Swansea New Theatre.
Judge Pollock was presiding in a case between the theatre owner Andrew Melville and an actress and dancer Eva Eden.
Not off to a good start are we? Can that truly be her real name?  We don’t know but the serpent in her particular garden was Andrew Melville.
He owned a number of provincial theatres, including the New Theatre in Swansea, and the lovely Eva was on tour with the “Maid Marion Provincial Company.” You might speculate that this does not represent the very highest point in a career, but I couldn’t possibly comment. The New Theatre has sadly disappeared into the bland uniformity of what Swansea likes to call its “Café Quarter.” At the time it was an important venue, especially since it was directly opposite The Mackworth Arms Hotel, where the mail coach would terminate. Leggy dancing girls would have proved interesting to some I am sure, after a long bumpy day on the road. Convenient. Energising perhaps. But it hadn’t proved such an attractive venue for Eva.
You see, this whole case rested upon a carpet. As it were.  It was alleged that the stage carpet was badly fixed. It was creased and “ruffled.” But as far as the theatre was concerned, no incident happened at all.
Eva appeared in court in an invalid chair, quite possibly one of her finest performances. She had been earning £2 10s a week, plus travelling expenses and costume, but in the second act her foot had caught in the carpet and she had fallen.
Allegedly.
Her injury was such that Eva had to give up her career. So she was seeking damages of £700 for loss of earnings.
The defendants were very clear. Her injuries were caused by nothing more than high kicking. This idea appears to have got the Judge hot under the wig. It was not the sort of stuff that normally came his way. Eva might have claimed that her “tarantella” was nothing more than a “skirt dance” but her injury was caused by “trying to kick higher than she was able to reach with her toe.”
There was considerable laughter in the court as they tried to untangle this difference of opinion. Richard Hopkins, a scene shifter at the theatre, was called as a witness. As far as he was concerned the dance involved “high kicking” and appeared “somewhat reckless.” Judge Pollock, enjoying himself mightily, commented that he was not aware that a scene shifter was a “maitre de ballet.” This generated a proper amount of politely hysterical laughter. Perhaps you had to be there.
He must have thought that all his birthdays had come at once because there was some detailed talk of anatomy, female medical conditions and an attempt to determine just how high a leg could be kicked. But the real issue for the jury was who was telling the truth? Had the injuries been caused by a carpet or by high kicking, if indeed they existed at all? They deliberated for almost three hours but they were unable to agree. So they were discharged.
At this point the case disappears from view, which is very frustrating indeed. Perhaps it was for Judge Pollock too. What happened next? I haven’t been able to find out. Did the lovely Eva spend her life dreaming of a time when she could kick her foot as high as her shoulder?  Did she develop a life-long aversion to carpets?  I think we should be told. There is more work to be done on this story. If I find out anything I will certainly let you know.

When I look at the stories I have written so far I am convinced that some of them will never be finished. There are always new and important details to be added. Time has frayed the details sometimes and it isn’t easy to restore them in their entirety. The tales are not complete and probably never will be.It is part of their attraction I suppose.  I was made aware of this a few weeks ago when I had new information from a direct descendant of the murderer Henry Tremble that added to my understanding of his actions. I reported this new information on this website (See the blog entry 20 April 2009 – Henry Tremble)
Well, I have had more fascinating information today (26 May 2009). I started the day with a radio interview on our local station Swansea Sound. They only wanted five minutes from me so it was over very quickly and so I went off to the Central Library in Swansea to meet the convenor of a local history group, Marilyn Jones. They have asked me to speak on Saturday 20 June 2009 and I wanted to look at the room where I will be speaking. I was completely reassured. Not only does it have an inter-active whiteboard but also an absolutely fantastic view across the bay to Mumbles, so if the audience get bored when I am talking at least they will be able to take in the view.
During our conversation Marilyn told me something very interesting. It was all because her husband’s family came from Felindre, where I found the story of Eleanor Williams, who appears on page 84 of Volume One.
Now this story gave me a lot of trouble when I was writing it because there never seemed to be enough detail about her. She was murdered and thrown into a well on Llwyngwenno Farm in Felindre near Swansea in 1832 but apart from that the poor girl’s trail was very cold indeed. In the end, I based my writing upon the startling similarities between her death and that of Margaret Williams in Cadoxton, the very first story I ever researched. Two servant girls, both from Carmarthenshire, both pregnant and both murdered.
If you have read the piece, either in the magazine or in the book, you will remember that I speculate about why the gravestone in Nebo Chapel names the farmer for whom she worked as a servant, Thomas Thomas. His name is chiselled there for all to see, along with the name of poor Eleanor. Well of course it is a very significant detail, and once more it reflects the Cadoxton murder in an uncanny way.
Quite simply the community in this rather small and enclosed little village believed they knew who had killed Eleanor. It was the son of Thomas Thomas, just as the Cadoxton Community believed that the farmer’s son Llewellyn Richard had killed Margaret Williams nine years earlier. Indeed Felindre modelled its response on their reaction. They were convinced they knew who had done it. They couldn’t prove it but they didn’t really need the law. What they wanted was justice. So they erected their accusatory gravestone, just as they had done in Cadoxton. They might not have had the revenge they wanted, but they never forgot. Marilyn told me about the people painting the gates of the Nebo Chapel red on his wedding day. She said that they painted parts of the road red too. Even at that moment he could not escape from what he had done. Or at least what they thought he had done.
These are not the sort of details that normally find their way out of the oral tradition. I am sure there is more information like this waiting for me. Just as it was with the story of Sara Hughes in north Wales in Brithdyr (Welsh Country Magazine – May 2009) there is a residual memory of these dramatic events in local communities that needs to be captured.
That means that this project of mine is still a work in progress – and about this I am extremely pleased.

I was booked to do a book signing in Aberystwyth and we didn’t fancy going up there and then back again in one day. So we looked for somewhere to stay. The first couple of places we tried were full and so we ended up in a lovely place we haven’t visited for a while.
Cnapan is an excellent restaurant with rooms in Newport Pembrokeshire. It might be a little further from Aberystwyth than we wanted, but it is certainly worth the detour. It is a beautifully elegant place, a listed Georgian townhouse on East Street and I love going there. It is so relaxed and comfortable. You are made to feel at home from the moment you walk through the door. The bedrooms are full of character and we sat in ours for a while before our meal on Friday (15 May 2009), watching the wind drive the rain in from the sea.  From the window we could see the church looking down on us and Mynydd Carningli behind, drifting in and out of the low cloud.
I can recommend Cnapan without reservation and I can definitely recommend the fish stew whilst Liz would recommend the chicken cooked with puy lentils and chorizo. Then the weather, which had been wet and miserable all day, unexpectedly lifted. It was suddenly a lovely spring evening and we walked down to Parrog and watched the sunset. It was beautiful.
Click here to visit the Cnapan website.
Friday night was probably the best part of the weekend. My book signing was a disaster. No books sold and no interest shown by the good people of Aberystwyth either. It was a long way to go to be ignored. I could have saved money and stayed in the classroom with my boys in Year 10. It would definitely have been warmer in my classroom, despite the unpredictability of the school heating system. There was a bitter wind coming in off the sea on Saturday. Grey Aberystwyth indeed.

My boys would probably have preferred the original meaning of “cnapan”, their interest in high quality cooking being generally a touch limited.
It was the name of an ancient and vicious game which was popular in medieval and Tudor times. It is an ancestor of rugby apparently.  It didn’t spread much outside Pembrokeshire and you can understand why. Modern re-creations of the game have not prospered largely because no one will provide insurance cover. When it was revived for a match between Wales and England, the Welsh won easily, as a consequence of not explaining the rules. Not that here are many to be frank.
It must have been quite an event, with the game stretching for miles. It was played with a hard wooden ball, rather like a cricket ball. It was perhaps a little larger than a tennis ball. This was the “cnapan.” The object was to take the ball back home to your own parish church. Simple really.
Opposing teams were huge, with hundreds of players. In fact a team was usually the entire male population of a village.
There was an annual grudge match between Newport and nearby Nevern. The game would start on the beach – Traeth Mawr –and the game would rage its way along roads, across fields and through hedges. Players were on foot, although the gentry took part on horseback, armed with staves and cudgels. Their objective was probably to remain fully clothed in order to preserve a little of the dignity appropriate to their position.  The others played in only trousers or breeches since any other clothes would be ripped off. It was a good idea to keep your hair and beard short, apparently. You might ask yourself how in such circumstances you could distinguish members of the other side but I don’t suppose it mattered that much. Injuries were common as you might expect, and deaths not unusual.
There were tactics – of a kind. There were positions like backs and forwards, and tacklers. There was passing and marking. But mostly it was fighting.  
The game usually ended either when darkness intervened or when the players went home because victory for one side seemed inevitable. My Year 10 boys would have loved it, although there are no plans to introduce it to the school curriculum, currently.
In the still and peaceful sunset on Friday it was hard to think that this village had once been the home of such mayhem. To be honest, as an outsider who doesn’t carry the rugby gene, cnapan doesn’t seem a great deal different from its modern-day counterpart.  But then what do I know? Certainly I have no doubt as to which particular Cnapan I prefer.
We shall be going back.

One of the great things about the writing that I do is that I am free to follow leads as they turn up. Earlier this week my work was all planned out. I knew what I was going to do. I fought off the attractions of a lost village in Carmarthen Bay and turned to ... and then something else jumped out of the past and nowI can’t ignore it.
I have known about the Harries family from Caio for a while. They were early nineteenth century astrologers and doctors who inspired respect and fear in equal measure in their locality. I always thought I would write about them. Fascinating characters, they either possessed secret powers or they were charlatans, depending on your point of view. But I have always put off writing about them because I have already explored the story behind another grave in this tiny village. That was John Johnes who was murdered by his butler Henry Tremble. It is a dramatic story indeed and one I couldn’t ignore. But I didn’t want to do Caio again. I have had the same problem with Kidwelly too. I have written about poor little John Thomas in Volume One (page 130) and about Gwenllian, the Welsh warrior princess, though this story is as yet unpublished, since it is intended for Volume Three. But Kidwelly also witnessed the notorious murder of Mabel Greenwood in the early twentieth century and I have a lot of material for that. However, I always feel I need to spread my net as wide as I can.
But Henry and John Harries have started to tempt me. Their magical powers certainly seem to stretch across the centuries to pull at me. It is an itch that I keep going back to scratch. And it is this detail that is taunting me. I found a passing reference in an old book and it just won’t go away.
A local girl had gone missing and Doctor Harries was called in. He considered for a moment and then said she’d been killed by her lover and had been buried near a stream under a tree which held a bees nest.
And of course they found her just as he said. Her lover confessed too.  The magistrates however were convinced that Harries could only have known this if he had been involved in some way. So he was charged with complicity.
Apparently he remained perfectly calm. He told the magistrates that if they could just tell him their dates of birth, he would do them the honour of writing down the date on which they would die.
The trembling magistrates discharged him immediately.What nerve.
I know myself too well. I won’t be able to resist. I can feel a trip to the beautiful and isolated village of Caio coming on....

On Saturday I was out once again, meeting my public. This time it was Border’s in Cardiff, a shop in the old David Morgan building on The Hayes. It is a nice shop, large and busy and I was certainly very well looked after by the staff, especially Vicki. However, promotion remains hard work. My grandmother was a hard working and successful market trader in South Yorkshire but I am afraid I don’t seem to have inherited her gifts. People out and about on a Saturday don’t want to be harassed; they just want to be left alone. They certainly don’t want to be approached by a writer with a wild look in his eyes.  I can clear an area around me almost instantly, so sales in the Biography section must have plummeted, because that is where they put me – between bargain cookery books and “Buy One Get One Free” offers.  
I did manage to waylay the unsuspecting on a couple of occasions and I was questioned for a while by one young woman who seemed to believe that the book was in some way about architecture. Even after I had explained it all to her.  A way to go, as they say. Everyone who looks at the book is impressed by the production values and is fascinated by the stories, but it is hard to get people to commit their cash in these difficult times. Still, it is always interesting to observe the people around you. If nothing else, it helps the time pass.
One young woman was pacing up and down in a very agitated state.  She was shouting into her mobile phone. “It had nothing to do with that! That’s not why we split up!” If it was genuine then it was mightily tense. If it was an avant-garde type of street theatre then it was highly effective. Either way I thought it best not to intrude. A book that contains murder might not have been the best idea.  On the other hand...
In the end I sold four books, which I was quite pleased about.  I was only there for a little over an hour. One young man and his partner strode up very purposefully. Yes they wanted a book. His mother had just given him a car so he wanted to buy her a present in return. Stories in Welsh Stone was apparently ideal. I was pleased to oblige. It is important that we all do our best to keep families in a state of harmony.
So Jenny, if you do ever read this blog, I hope you will feel that you got the best end of the bargain...
Next stop Aberystwyth in Waterstone’s, on Saturday 16 May 2009.

I went to Disneyland in Paris last week. I have been a number of times before, firstly with my children and now with my grandchildren. I know what to expect. It still exhausts me and excites me in equal measures. I have learnt too that if you are going to get anything out of the day then you need to suspend critical faculties at the gate as you go in or you will find yourself in a lather of bewilderment at the sight of a queue of people lining up to have their photo taken with a man dressed as a duck.
Phantom Manor seems to be just a ghost train but it is much more than that. The attention to detail is fantastic, both in the visual effects and in the way the audio slips from one scene to another. As a technical achievement it is astonishing. It is so carefully staged and managed, with a powerful Miss Haversham theme, straight out of “Great Expectations.”
The ride has all the elements of a horror story –the juxtaposition of beauty and death, the idea that at the moment of great happiness, like a wedding, mortality and betrayal can be laid bare. That at your moment of greatest unhappiness there is someone, or something, there, mocking you and laughing hysterically. There is the skull beneath the skin, watching you with empty eyes.
The great American writer Ambrose Bierce collected his short stories together under the title of “Cobwebs from an Empty Skull,” which is a fantastic title. He would have understood and enjoyed Phantom Manor.
Outside there is Boot Hill, a collection of comedy gravestones and you will not be surprised to learn that I cannot resist them. They are based on the simple and familiar idea that a headstone tells a story. In Disneyland of course they frame a joke but for the rest of us a headstone comes to represent a life. As I have said before, that is what my book is about. Often it is the only part of a life that is actually remembered. Poor Louisa Maud Evans in Cardiff is a good example, remembered for her death by parachute, not because of anything she might have achieved.
My responsibility is to try and tell the story that is there. But I cannot tell them all. Every cemetery I pass calls to me, with its forgotten stories, its dramas. Disney has tried to tap into that. In the Phantom Manor and Pirates of the Caribbean attractions, both so cleverly done, there is an awareness of the fascination that death holds. In the Pirates ride, amongst all the comedy pirate activity, suddenly you descend into a world of buried treasure, storms, leering skulls and evil skeletons.
These transitions from light into darkness are so very well stage managed, so much clearer than the transitions in our own lives. When you look at headstones you realise that real life isn’t quite so tidily arranged. Many of the people I have written about left unfinished business or were cut short before they had made their mark. My book tries to offer them recognition and respect.

I was always concerned that when the book finally went on to the shelves I would find out that I had written something wildly inaccurate, That I was guilty of perpetrating a significant inaccuracy. I have constructed all the stories carefully to maintain interest and extract the drama. But what if I was wrong? What if I was committing an injustice or perpetrating inadvertently a lie.
So you can imagine my concern when I received an email from Christopher Challener.  Now, Mr. Challener is a highly respected chef and food writer. He has his own website and I can certainly recommend it to you. There are some excellent recipes there.

Click here to go to Chris Challener’s website.

Most importantly for my purposes he is also the great grandson of Henry Tremble.
Henry was the butler who shot his employer John Johnes in Caio in 1876 and you can find my version of the story on page 120.
Mr. Challener pointed out one glaring error which I feel very guilty about. The caption to the picture on page 122 is completely wrong. What is identified as The Sexton’s Arms, the pub that the Trembles ran is in fact The Brunnant Arms. Indeed, you can see the name in the photo. It is a bad mistake that I should have identified in the proof reading stage. He also told me that Charles Cookman, John Johnes’ son in law died in Wales, not in Ireland as I suggest.
It was a notorious crime. The sort of story that provoked a thrill of unease amongst a Victorian readership, always aware that the unrest and political turbulence that swept Europe was only a gunshot away. Tremble was demonised as the ungrateful and unbalanced servant who ran amok, killing his indulgent and caring employer.However Mr Challener has provided new information which is really interesting and I am very grateful for this. I only wish I had an opportunity to amend the book.
Mr. Challener points out how small The Sexton’s Arms was – nothing more that someone’s front room. There are still places like this across Wales – The Eagle Inn in Llanfihangel ar Arth where they held the inquest for poor Sarah Jacob ( see page 108) is exactly like this. The work in the pub was carries out largely by Henry’s wife Martha, since he was obviously very busy as a butler. Now there are a couple of conclusions you can draw from this. Firstly, it would have been a big step to move from this kind of enterprise to running a proper inn like The Dolaucothi Arms. You can understand that John Johnes might have had second thoughts about granting him the tenancy. Certainly he offered it to him and then changed his mind. This may have fuelled a sense of simmering resentment.
Furthermore, the details about the pub help in other ways too. First of all, Martha drank rather more than she should, which may not have filled Johnes with confidence. And of course her job as a barmaid, serving drinks to men, might explain where Henry got the idea that she might be unfaithful. It is all part of the heady mix that pushed him over the edge.
The key factor was Henry Tremble’s real sense of betrayal. He had served the family loyally and yet when he wanted something, perhaps to pull his life back into order, they turned him down. He’d done so much for them. Mr. Challener tells me that when they were in Ireland he would carry a drunken Charlotte up to bed when she couldn’t manage it herself. He was so much a part of the family. He knew their secrets and yet they were ready to cast him aside.
There is no doubt that he intended to kill Charlotte and John Johnes and then kill himself. These things are clear. And he has been rightly condemned. But we have to try to understand the experiences that shaped him and which pushes a loyal and respected servant to act as he did. He hadn’t spent his entire life waiting for the moment to kill them.  He lost his hold on things, and to paraphrase W. B. Yeats, released anarchy into the world.
I remain extremely grateful to Mr. Challener for what he has told me. I think he has helped me achieve a better understanding of the horrible events. I am glad too that someone was ready to redress the balance and to offer some mitigation. The events of that awful day are filtered through the words of Charlotte Cookman. No one tried to understand Henry Tremble.
Perhaps we all should try harder.

I spend a lot of my time snuffling around the damp undergrowth of the internet, like a pig looking for truffles. Sometimes you find them and sometimes you don’t.  And sometimes you can pick up a faint scent. Often it is fascinating stuff but it doesn’t lead anywhere.  You know there is a story there, but there isn’t quite enough.
As I have said before, a gravestone is really important too. There is no point having a story but having no headstone. That has been the central part of the project since we started . I have been known to cheat when I have found a really good story. I did this with Martha Nash from Swansea. We know where she was buried but the grave itself has disappeared. It was such a sad story I wanted to publish anyway. But generally there isn’t much point if I haven’t got a headstone or a substantial story. But, as I say,  sometimes...
I came across this little story some months ago. It comes from 1607, which means that a grave is almost an impossibility. It might have survived if it was that of a nobleman, but the grave of an ordinary person? No chance.
The story comes from Hanmer in Flintshire and concerns Elinor Evans who was a maidservant. She had injured her ankle and a surgeon named William Jones was called. She had financial assistance from her friends and neighbours to pay for treatment. It cost 30 shillings. You can judge for yourself whether she got value for money.
You see, it did not go well. Once he had the money he neglected his duties. “In a short tyme (her) legg and bonn did putrifye and petrishe.” Now personally I would regard this as bad news. Elinor did too.
She called him back and gave him more money, this time to perform an amputation. For those of you who know Flaubert’s Madame Bovary there are certain echoes here. But it gets worse. He now decided to devote more time to her than he had originally, for he “did so perswade and entise (her) to yeald and consent to his leud and fleshly desire that he begat her with child.” Perhaps in those pre-anaesthetic days it was the only way he had to take her mind off things. Perhaps his best hope of success came with a woman who might struggle to run away, but perhaps I am being unkind.
Jones had been bound over to appear at Denbigh Great Sessions, since he was being pursued for maintenance and he had gone into hiding. Sadly I don’t know any more than this, but it certainly adds a little something to the traditional doctor/patient relationship.
But if Elinor had had access to those amputation tools the story might have ended very differently.

What’s wrong with people? Don’t they understand the idea of shopping early for Christmas? What about phrases like “avoid disappointment” or “whilst stocks last”? Have they no meaning anymore?
There was hail beating its way down Oxford Street. There were Incas playing pan pipes. But people wouldn’t come in.
Yes it was book signing time again and I stood like Billy No Mates in Waterstone’s in Swansea. There was a table there for me. My books displayed neatly. Special stickers saying “Signed by the Author,”  readily available.
And I stood there with a fixed, rather manic smile on my face, staring at the door. There was an exclusion zone around me large enough to shelter an ocean-going tanker from marauding pirates. The deeper recesses of the shop were quite busy but near me there was no one at all. Welcome to the Twilight Zone.
I can understand it. I would do the same.  I must have had the air of desperation of a high street market researcher with limited hygiene, trying to stop someone – anyone – just for a moment, to show that their life was not a complete waste of time. When someone like that approaches you, then the flight instinct takes over. Don’t worry about their feelings. Run away!
I did sell a book to someone I knew (thank you Scott)  but whenever I did try to speak to people they regarded me with the kind of horror usually reserved for old men who keep their relatives locked in a cellar for years.
My friend Jane and her daughter Rebecca popped in to see me. Jane is always keen to offer advice.
“You know your problem? You are not gobby enough. Wouldn’t be a problem for me.”
I looked at the stack of books on the table and realised that she might have a point.  It is just that I thought us writers were supposed to be thoughtful and reflective. Not at all “gobby.” Still I must try harder. Especially as I have another signing next Saturday in Border’s in Fforestfach, Swansea.
Perhaps I should offer sweets to entice strangers to my table, and then wait for the “gobby” gene to kick in. Or just try a different after shave.

The BBC studios in Swansea are in a beautiful building next to the Glyn Vivian Art Gallery and Terry let me in with a cheery smile. I was not feeling so relaxed myself. I was going to be interviewed on the Jamie and Louise morning radio programme on Radio Wales. A significant feature in the landscape of Welsh Radio and I felt that I was putting myself on view. Every stumble or hesitation would be analysed. Heads would be shaken. I would be weighed in the balance and found wanting.
The studio itself was not the sort of place to promote relaxation. There was a comfy chair certainly, but it allowed me merely to stare down the barrel of a microphone, impersonal, impassive, unfeeling.
The sound levels were adjusted and I listened to music I couldn’t recognise, with occasional interruptions from the producer. There was a feature about a race horse. The trainer sounded so coherent. I was sure I could not emulate him. Then it was the news and then The Kinks. I was not Lazing on a Sunday afternoon, no matter how much they tried to persuade me of its delights. Then suddenly they were ready and I was off, speaking I felt, far too quickly
I found it quite difficult. I was separated completely from the usual visual clues you get in a conversation because, of course, I was entirely alone. But the presenters in Cardiff, Jamie Owen and Louise Elliott, were excellent. They were very skilled at what they did and seemed genuinely interested in the book. They may not have been but they convinced me. They gave me the opportunity to talk about a lot of the stories. Then there was a pause and Bryan Adams was saying quite clearly that he was going to “Run to You.”  I don’t know what you have done but apparently he is on his way.
I was aware of how seamless a radio programme has to be and how we take for granted the work that makes it so . Music, trailer, talk. It was comforting to realise that everything was so well organised and controlled. But it was hard, talking in a vacuum. In the classroom at least I can see the kids ignoring me.
They asked me about my current researches and I was able to mention Anglesey where Louise was brought up. I talked about the training ship The Clio for a while, on which orphan boys were trained for a life at sea and on which quite a few died. They are buried in Llandegfan, overlooking the Menai Straight.
And then suddenly it was over and Terry took me to the door. He thought I had done alright and had been interested in the stories I had mentioned. I hope everyone else was too.
I stepped out on to the street and looked around at all the people busily being busy. I stood for a moment and wondered just how many people in this grey and windy world had actually been listening to me. Then I went back to school.

Click here to visit the Jamie and Louise webpages

We had an email at Welsh Country from the Lowe family in North Wales. They are the descendants of Harold Godfrey Lowe who I wrote about in the March edition of the magazine. He was an Officer on The Titanic on the night of the disaster in 1912 and he behaved with considerable bravery as the terrible events unfolded. He was calm and unflappable and was regarded by many survivors as the true hero of The Titanic on that dreadful night when the ship went down.
We were pleased to be able to recognise his considerable achievements and bring them to greater attention. Harold Lowe is a true Welsh Hero and we should remember him with respect. Publishing the article brought us all into contact with a wider community of Titanic experts across the world, particularly in Australia, and we all had a sense of achievement that we had done something that met with their informed approval. We were able to locate his grave too, with the able assistance of my grandsons Alex and Will, who conducted themselves properly in the large graveyard but also enjoyed the search.  They really were the ones who found Harold’s grave up at the top by the wall. I had missed it.
Imagine our shock therefore when, a couple of weeks after publication, we learned in that email that the graveyard where Harold rests, in Llandrillo church in Rhos, Llandudno, had been vandalised. Thankfully Harold’s grave, which is being tidied up at the moment, escaped damage. But perhaps I shouldn’t say “thankfully.” His memorial might have escaped but others did not. They were overturned, toppled, broken. The people they remembered were perhaps less prominent than Harold, but they were equally as important to someone. And every grave is a story waiting to be discovered.
Of course it is vandalism. Of course it is mindless. It is probably kids who in the past have been drinking in the cemetery, according to the Internet report about the damage on the BBC website.  It is very sad.

Click here to read the news item on the BBC website.

I work with young people and I know that this sort of thing is what a very small minority get up to, because they think it is daring and thrilling. They are perhaps trying to show that they are not afraid of death, one of our ultimate taboos, that they are not prepared to be bound by our inhibitions, that they are free spirits who can leave their own mark on our grey world.  But the majority of our young people are caring and respectful and would never ever think of doing something like this.
What we need to do is to ensure respect for the past. We need our children to listen to the voices in the graveyards telling their stories, and to learn from them. That’s why I write my articles and my books. We have a responsibility to learn from the past and to remember the achievements of people like Harold Lowe who did things that are way beyond the capabilities of most of us.
It is our duty. Those vandals in the graveyard are lost souls and they deserve our pity as well as our anger.

I am drawn to stories about schools. I can’t help it. It is where I have spent my life. So when I was snuffling about in old newspapers and I saw this, I couldn’t look away.

A school prize day in Reynoldston in Gower in 1866. What a wonderful occasion it must have been.

The school had about 70 girls and they had clearly spent a long time during the day getting ready, under the careful guidance of Mrs Rains, their governess. The room had been decorated with flowers and improving mottos. “Search the Scriptures” and “Wisdom is better than rubies.” An example there for my classroom I think, once I have wiped away the spit of course.  

Mrs Rains and the master of the school, Mr. E.G. Harris, didn’t realise how lucky they were. They had it easy. They didn’t have to deal with chewing gum and half-empty cans of coke, forgotten and sticky in a corner.

The girls were blessed by good weather, which always helps I find, since wind and rain usually makes the little horrors wild. Lunch duty on a day of horizontal rain? That’s only attractive to the seriously disturbed. But on this famous day the weather was kind and everything ran smoothly.

I bet the girls were thrilled with their prizes too for, as we are told, “the awarding of prizes is productive of much good and produces a very salutary effect on the characters of children generally” They were given “several beautifully bound and valuable books.” No vouchers for bargain hair extensions for them then. But they did so much better than the kids in my own school. We handed out Woolworth’s vouchers on the day before they went out of business. We should have realised why they were so cheap.
Anyway, the books “strengthened the endeavours of the diligent to further diligence.” I am afraid to say that the only effect the vouchers had in school was to make the kids rather ratty.

Some things don’t change though. The ones who didn’t receive a prize were “characterised by thoughtlessness, carelessness and irregular attendance.” I think I know these girls.

They all had a good tea, sang the national anthem with enthusiasm and then turned their attention to “athletic sports.”
Hmm. My girls at school do exactly the same. And it frightens my boys to death.

It was World Book Day last week and as a captive writer and teacher I was asked to speak to a group of pupils about writing.
I turned up in the Library as requested and soon I had a small group staring at me as if I was some kind of freak. Well, they have met me before.
I talked to them about the writing process. I showed them some original sources about the little girl Martha Nash who died in 1899 when her father may, or may not, have thrown her off Swansea pier. I wrote about this in the November 2008 edition of Welsh Country Magazine. I thought it was an appropriate story because she lived close by, on the other side of the river. You can see where she lived from the library windows at the top of our school.
A long densely packed page of newsprint from The Cambrian newspaper looks so intimidating. I showed them how I reduced the information to a series of randomly arranged notes on scrappy bits of paper. Then I displayed my typewritten version and the pictures I had taken to go with the article. I then showed them the final product and how the artistic designer uses the material to create visually interesting pages. Thus they could see the whole process. I showed them the same thing  with the recently published piece about Harold Lowe and The Titanic. The additional element here was that the piece had been sent to be peer-assessed by a Titanic expert in Australia. They could see the discussions we’d had and the decisions we reached using the “track changes” facility on Word.. The finished piece in the magazine was impressive too, with a brilliant photo of The Titanic into which the text flowed.
The important point I wanted to make as a teacher was that when you write you always have to revise and re-shape. The pupils need to do this with their own work. I told them not to worry about the beginning until they get to the end. You can always organise it all afterwards. These days, especially with computers, you don’t have to start at the beginning and go through to the end. Get the words down first, then structure it, that was my advice. I often find that when I am revising something I move the last paragraph to the beginning to create a better opening.
None of this though impressed Courtney, who had other concerns. She wanted to know the date when The Titanic sank. I told her. 15 April 1912. She was most insistent. Was I sure?  I re-assured her.  Yes, the early hours of Monday  15 April 1912. 2.20 am. A little over 3 hours after being struck. I was sure. Courtney relaxed. “ That’s  alright then. I don’t want that always spoiling my birthday.”

We arrived at the church, small and neat as country churches often are, and there was a church warden standing just outside the door watching us. We were in the churchyard of St. Gallgo’s in Llanallgo on Anglesey. We had done our research thoroughly before we left home, so we knew our targets and could see them quite clearly from the path. I started to take photographs. I am not very good so I need to take plenty to give myself a chance of getting something acceptable.
The impatient look on the face of the gentleman by the door softened as he recognised our mission.“You are looking for the Royal Charter,” he said.

He was right. 140 of the victims of the great shipwreck of 1859 when The Royal Charter was driven on to the rocks at Moelfre were brought here. The story is still remembered in the parish, which emphasises the enormity of the event itself. 400 people returning from Australia lost and a stash of gold, some of which allegedly still lies in the bay.  Optimistic divers still go down, for the wreck lies in just 10 feet of murky water. The possibility of treasure can be so difficult to ignore. This will be a  good story for the magazine, though someone far greater than I will ever be, had beaten me to it some time ago. Charles Dickens came to Anglesey to report on the wreck at the end of December in 1859 for his own mag.
The gent by the door was David Hitchen and he was there to welcome a wedding party. However they were already late. Well actually it was more than that. They had failed to turn up at all on a previous occasion and didn’t seem likely to appear this time either. David was there to greet them and then call the minister, who clearly was not ready to turn out without the positive and confirmed sighting of a bride. We were a welcome diversion.
David showed us round the church. He spoke about a recent fire, blamed on rats that had gnawed through electrical cables. At least the wooden beams were saved and so the integrity of the church had been preserved. He showed us the restored chairs for the congregation, re-sanded by a local carpenter. We saw the table in the corner placed back-to-front to hide its date, and so deter thieves.
Outside he showed us the things that we knew about and some other things that we didn’t. The Victorian Memorial has a serious list and needs to be re-sited, for it was originally placed on inadequate foundations. It is currently taped off. We saw the recently renovated grave of Reverend Stephen Roose Hughes who invested such emotion and compassion in supporting the families of the victims, that he died of exhaustion brought on by his duties. We knew about this. We didn’t know about the other graves he showed us, one of which was a faded chest tomb containing the Davies family, mother, father and their children, paid for by their surviving son and daughter.  He showed us a stone laid recently by an American family who had lost an ancestor in the disaster.
David stopped occasionally, gazing skywards as we watched trainee pilots from RAF Valley. A man like David with a military background has a duty to watch and respect such activity.  But there was no sign of activity from the wedding party. Having married off two daughters and experienced the inescapable momentum that wedding arrangements generate, I cannot understand how anyone could approach the event so casually.  We thanked David for his help. We are lucky that there are still people like him and his friends in the church who are ready to remember and preserve our past in the way that they do.  We should all be grateful that there are communities that value their place in history. Now I have seen the memorials I really want to get on with the story. I just hope that I will be able to do justice to such a tumultuous story. It will be hard to follow Dickens, for whom words were never a problem.
We went off up the hill to the Derimon smokery where we bought excellent smoked duck and delicious salmon. We had to go there. They supply produce to the El Bulli restaurant in Barcelona, which is regarded as one of the best restaurants in the world. We couldn’t be so close and then not call in. It was a very pleasant visit. The owner had just returned from sailing out on the flat-calm sea to look at seals.
When we drove back David had given up on the wedding and gone home.

Click here to visit the Derimon website.

Some of the writing I come across in my researches is quite outstanding. It is so different from the sort of writing you see today in newspapers. In the 19th century there was more a sense of narrative and this lay at the very heart of what they wrote.  
When you read something like this in the South Wales Post under the headline The Drowned Aeronaut you forget very quickly that it is a newspaper report.
It comes from 1896 and  is about a young girl called Mary Waggett...
...living in Wind Bow Cottage in the neighbourhood of the Powder Houses overlooking the Usk waters, (who) was rambling along the Severn sea embankment in the direction of the new Nash Lighthouse, when on coming to the second bay-like indentation east of the mouth of the Usk, her youthful vision descried a human body, floating in the fast-receding waves. A hasty glance to make sure of the fact and the affrighted Mary ran back home as fast as her sturdy young limbs could carry her. She had left the house of her parents with meandering footsteps, wandering in and out with the twists and turns of the sea-robbed embankment; she returned straight across the sedgy  moor, jumping waterless rillets and startling thirsty cattle; and, frightened and excited the panting girl reported to her mother what she had seen. It was a sailor, she declared, doubtless misled by the nautical attire of the unfortunate parachutist.
And of course all this took place“within sound of the harsh death-song of the clanging bell-buoy.”
Just wonderful.
Look at the length of the sentences. They certainly treated their readers with respect. They expected not only that they would want to read something like this, but also that they would be able to read it.
Of course journalists even then were not adverse to a little subterfuge to get some attention. The sub-heading to the piece is Swansea Girl’s Sad End.
Well she never was from Swansea and the journalist knew that too. It was known that she was from Bristol. In fact, her origins don’t feature anywhere at all in the article. Just a little to trick to attract a Swansea audience I imagine. Why let the facts get in the way of a good story? It is still something that rarely troubles a sub-editor.

This, by the way, is a very good story and it is due to appear in Welsh Country Magazine in July I think. So you will have to wait until then to learn the rest of this sad little tale.

We went up to Chester to stay with our daughter Laura and her family last weekend. It was lovely to see them all and of course to be looked after so well.  It was time to re-acquaint myself with our two grandsons. Mr Will is 3 and has a long-standing obsession with Disney’s Cars. Lightning McQueen is a red car for those of you who don’t know. It is believed that he can talk. Alex who is 8 had no time for such trivia and preferred to run through the Portuguese football team for me. It was information that I needed.Apparently he expects to see a number of them when they go on holiday to Portugal later in the year.
It had been a busy day of shopping along the Rows and, once I had discussed with son in law Richard which wines to open, I settled down with a local history book. The welcome clattering sounds from the kitchen were soon replaced by the fine aroma of a  bubbling cassoulet and I drifted into the past.
Soon I was paying little attention to the episode of Lazy Town that the boys insisted on watching (a place which had a certain appeal for me after a day in the shops) and instead was diverted by a good grave story, although sadly the headstone has long since disappeared. This is not surprising really, since it allegedly marked the burial place of a picture.
I had better explain.
This local legend is from the village of Hawarden and dates back to about 946 AD. It was a very hot summer and the people needed rain. They prayed to a picture called The Holy Rood which they kept in a hay loft. It showed the Virgin Mary holding a large cross in her hands. Lady Trawst was particularly devoted and spent a long time in front of the picture, praying for rain. Suddenly the picture fell down on her head and killed her.
The decision was taken to try the image for murder and a jury was formed. The verdict was “guilty” and it was determined that the picture should die. They apparently discussed hanging (well what else are you going to do with a picture?) and rejected death by drowning, even though they were hoping for rain. Their decision making was hampered by their awareness that this was after all a holy picture. They decided in the end to lay it on the banks of river Dee. The picture was duly carried away on the tide and deposited near the city walls of Chester.
The good people of Chester were not so sure that they wanted it, so they buried it where they found it and erected a headstone over it.
The Jews their God did crucify,
The Hardeners theirs did drown,
‘Cause with their wants she did not comply
And lies under this cold stone.
It is not recorded how long it was before it rained again but the place where the picture was buried was named “Rood Dee,” hence the name for the car park.
I don’t believe a word. It sounds like an insulting story to me, invented by a neighbouring village to prove how stupid the people of Hawarden really were. I don't really know, but I can tell you that Laura's cassoulet was excellent.

A large Victorian Cemetery can be so daunting when you are looking for a specific headstone and the cemetery stretches out before you. It can be difficult enough in an overgrown country churchyard where the words upon the stones have melted in the rain. In a municipal cemetery it can appear to be an impossible task.

Fortunately the larger ones are divided into sections and records will show you where a particular person is buried. In Cathays Cemetery in Cardiff they go one better. There is a heritage trail, a route past a number of interesting graves. Add to this a map that you can download from the internet and suddenly everything seems so much easier.

On this occasion we arrived "en famille". I always feel that it is better to park outside and walk in to the cemetery but sometimes this isn't practical especially in the extensive ones like Newport, Cardiff and Aberdare. So we drove in and parked under the tall trees on a bright January morning. My mother in law stayed in the car and read The Daily Mail, which was presumably offering the sort of spluttering commentary on events that hasn't changed at all since the people around her were buried.

We strode off bravely into cemetery with our map. We had three targets - and two we found quite easily. The other proved a little more elusive. I ventured deep into an untended area to find it, working diligently, not hiding behind a bush as my wife Liz believed, having a pee. An opinion prompted by bitter experience I imagine.

I found it in the spot my wife and her sister Moira had just vacated. They had been almost leaning on the marker post but not seen the grave. "If it had had teeth it would have bitten us," said Moira eloquently. They had missed it in the undergrowth, presumably transfixed by the possibility of seeing me in action. They were sadly disappointed, though I called them back to share my triumph.

The headstone had slumped at an artistic angle and the letters that had been attached with rivets had started to fall. It all added to the sense of a forgotten story, slipping silently into the past and fueled that need to capture it before it is too late.

We took our photos and headed off for refreshment. As I drove out of the peace of the cemetery on to the busy roads, on to the shopping element of our trip, I couldn't get the last headstone out of my mind. All those letters once attached carefully and individually, being shed like leaves. One day they will all be gone.

Yes all this searching around in cemeteries might have started off as a hobby and as a vehicle for telling interesting stories. But now it is a responsibility.

I went to the new Reference Library in Swansea to do a bit of research. It is situated in the Civic Centre and it is very smart indeed. Comfortable and bright. But it wasn’t the modern developments that drew me there, smart as they are. Rather it was the past, as always.

The contemporary newspapers are such an excellent source of otherwise unconsidered detail for any story that I write and they are so very evocative. They speak of an entirely different time and of completely different priorities.

I have been working on the Mumbles Lifeboat Disaster of 1947 and the relevant papers were easy to find. Naturally it was all over the front page – and the back – and dominated the paper for a number of days. I have already written my account but I need the details that only a newspaper would carry. One of the crew Richard Smith was due to be married three days later. “His fiancée is not a Mumbles woman , but lives in the village.” The first to contribute to the Mayor’s Distress fund were the officers and members of the Bristol Channel Yacht Club who contributed £205. The picture on the front page of the South Wales Evening Post shows “the boiling spume of the wind-lashed sea.” It is only a little over 60 years ago but you wouldn’t get a caption like that in a newspaper today.

Once I start, I can’t stop.

Soon I was a microfiche slave, navigating my way through the sometimes imprecise images on the screen.

I was drawn further into the past.

There is always an excitement in looking at old newspapers because I always believe that there is a fascinating story just waiting to be uncovered. The process is entirely unpredictable and I never achieve as much as I hope because I am so easily side tracked. I mean, how can I resist a headline from 1896 which reads “Disgraceful scene at Swansea. Husband attacked at wife’s funeral. Attempts at lynching.” I mean, what tragedy and tensions lie behind that particular family spat? Will I ever know the whole story? What possessed a journalist to write “Why doesn’t Swansea emulate Blackpool?” And then of course there is a review of “Lunacy in Glamorgan in 1895” which, as you can imagine, has extensive column inches.

You realise that all these words were once more than a curiosity. They meant something to the people who bought the paper and poured over the tiny print that was sometimes blurred in these huge nineteenth century broadsheets.

Soon my eyes got tired so I went home. But I shall be back. I can’t get the idea of a lynching at a funeral out of my head.

A morbid interest? 08 January 2009

So here we are back in school. The cold icy weather still doesn’t stop some kids turning up in school without a coat and they huddle together for warmth like penguins. They are of course pleased to be back in school. Like most of the teachers they are keen to restore some kind of normality to their lives because the Christmas holiday can become very boring. Even for the truly committed teenager, there is still a limit to the amount of chocolate they can eat.
I was ready to go back and to catch up on the gossip and also to try and bring pay day a little closer. At the moment it seems a long way away!
But even though I am throwing myself back into my ordinary life, the priorities of the book still push their way into my attention.
I had a phone call from the local evening paper in Swansea, The Evening Post, telling me that they are doing a feature on the book. Excellent. The publicity will definitely help!
What I have found very useful actually is this website. I can direct anyone here to get the background information that they need and I know also that they are getting a consistent message.
What I have found is that journalists always ask the same question. I presume that it is the question they believe their readers would want them to ask.They ask me why I do something that is as morbid as looking at headstones.
Well I don’t believe it is morbid at all. Gravestones are about people – the people who lie beneath and those who put the headstones there. And is there anything more interesting than people? Just look at the things that they do.
In the case of these headstones, those involved do things that lead to a tragedy. But it is not usually by design. The grave isn’t the culmination of a complicated plan. The headstone appeared as a result of a unique, sometimes accidental, combination of events.
Look at Thomas Heslop, shot in the back in a duel.
Look at Adeline Coquelin, a young girl drowned a long way from home.
No one really wants these things to happen. They just happen. Stuff happens. It happens all the time.
It might happen to us one day.
So I don’t see it as morbid at all.
Rather, my interest is an act of respect for those who have gone before. Because they represent true history. These are not the stories of great political conflicts. These are the stories of ordinary people.
Just like the rest of us.
That is why they should be remembered.

It has been an exciting year. All the usual things that I have done in the course of 35 years as a teacher have established a familiar rhythm and pattern to my life. But of course on top of it all now there has been the book, which suddenly arrived and blinked at the world at the beginning of November.

Prior to that there was a long period of waiting.

Right at the start of the year I had to write a replacement chapter to maintain the theme of unfortunate deaths so I took out the nineteenth century ironmaster, Robert Crawshay (who is now sitting in Volume Two) and substituted Joseph Butler, who was shot by a poacher in 1868.

I remember driving into West Wales on New Years Day in 2008. It was cold and quiet. The whole of the countryside appeared to be ours. Apart from a large party out watching a hunt near Tregaron we hardly saw anyone. We found the grave much more easily than we expected and sat in the car in the absolute peace and quiet eating our sandwiches.

We then drove on to the Hafod Estate (a remarkable place which will also feature in Volume Two) and then on to the Harbourmasters in Aberaeron for fine coffee in their lovely lounge. It was an excellent and a successful day and a really good start to the year. And now that year has almost disappeared, and the book we have talked about for so long is enhancing shelves everywhere.

And not just in shops I trust.

As I sit here in a post Christmas glow I hope for two things. I hope that those people who have copies of the book find that it is worth reading and that 2009 brings with it just as much interest and just as many unexpected discoveries as 2008.