Winston Churchill - Mark Williams TV - Ken Jones - Who Really Discovered America TV - Tablet at Fort Morgan - Michael Wood TV - Simon Schama TV - Robert Bartlett TV - Blackadder III TV - George Alagaiah TV - Allen Ginsberg - Richplanet - Dylan Thomas - Wynford Vaughan-Thomas - Evan James - R S Thomas - William Shakespeare - Huy Edwards - Twenty-Four-Seven 1997 - Frankie Boyle TV -
If the Welsh are striking over hunger, then we must fill their bellies with lead. Winston Churchill
This is the perfect roofing material ... And the Welsh had solved the problem by building a transport system ... Rails were first laid through the mountains of north Wales in 1833. Mark Williams on the Rails s1e4: Moving Mountains, Discovery 2004
The small locomotives were the perfect solution. They brought steam power to the mountains without the need to change the line built for the horse-drawn carts. Steam-power quickly spread through the Welsh hills. ibid.
General William Palmer was a man with big ideas ... He wanted to build a six-hundred-mile network of railways ... The Rockies: that didn’t stop him ... In 1871 he started building his line ... Palmer’s narrow-gauge network made millions. ibid.
But towards the middle of the 19th century, a small community with no significant history was transformed into an industrial hell-hole, its name to be known around the world: a bawdy, brawling Klondike, attracting both the rural Welsh and swarms of immigrant workers – English, Irish, Italians, Spaniards – many to endure conditions of indescribable squalor: infant mortality of such devastating proportions that a child was lucky to survive five years.
Thousands settled long the infested banks of the River Taff and the Glamorgan Canal that carried iron down to the sea at Cardiff; exploited, corrupted, amoral, condemned to a miserable existence in cheap lodging-houses and in a shanty town of such pervading awfulness that the district of Georgetown around the Iron Bridge (notorious 'China') evoked a sense of everlasting doom.
It is no exaggeration to suggest that Merthyr once qualified as one of the hardest towns on earth, its riverside ghettoes the natural habitat of murderers, tricksters, shysters, thieves, prostitutes and footpads. Ken Jones, The Men of Merthyr
Wales 1150 A.D. 342 years before Columbus ... The idea that Madoc discovered America didn’t become part of the legend until the mid-1500s ... Some believe Madoc and a party of colonists left Wales in 1170. Who Really Discovered America? History 2010
In memory of Prince Madog, a Welsh explorer, who landed on the shores of Mobile Bay in 1170 and left behind, with the Indians, the Welsh language. Tablet at Fort Morgan, Mobile Bay
As for the Welsh in his day, Bede writes about them with some acrimony. Michael Wood, The Great British Nation: A People’s History 2/8, BBC 2012
Just as he had ripped the heart out of the Welsh sense of independence by carrying off their sacred relics, Edward now took the Stone of Scone, the symbol of the independent Scottish Crown, to Westminster. Simon Schama, A History of Britain s1e4: Nations, BBC 2000
The Welsh surrendered to the English king the crown of King Arthur. Professor Robert Bartlett, The Plantagenets II, PBS 2014
Have you ever been to Wales, Baldrick? Well don’t. It’s a ghastly place. Huge gangs of tough sinewy men roam the valleys terrifying people with their close-harmony singing. You need half a pint of phlegm in your throat just to pronounce the place names. Blackadder III: Any & Amiability, BBC 1987
Many of them had been born and bred in Cardiff but were still treated as foreigners. George Alagiah, Mixed Britannia 1/3 1910-1939, BBC 2011
Tiger Bay was home to many different races. ibid.
White fog lifting & falling on mountain-brow
Trees moving in rivers of wind
The clouds arise
as on a wave, gigantic eddy lifting mist
above teeming ferns exquisitely swayed
along a green crag
glimpsed thru mullioned glass in valley raine. Allen Ginsberg, Wales Visitation
A small island in the Bristol Channel known as Flat Home may be sold off by Cardiff City Council. Richplanet TV: South Wales/King Arthur, interview Wilson
South Wales has assets of huge historical importance ... One of these is the grave of the legendary King Arthur. ibid.
We have an ancient British alphabet. ibid. Wilson
There is enough contemporaneous record in the stones. ibid.
Chronicles of England: King Arthur II at least was a king of Glamorgan and Gwent. ibid.
Wales: The Land of King Arthur. ibid.
King Arthur was taught ... until about 1924 certainly. Richplanet TV: The Forensic Historians IV: King Arthur's Grave, Wilson & Blackett; see also On the Edge interview
The History of the Kings of Britain: Geoffrey of Monmouth. ibid.
Arthur I & Arthur II: they pushed the two together into one. ibid.
Ancestors: we know more about them than any country in Europe. ibid.
They’re kings of a mighty dynasty. ibid.
The idea he is unknown is inconceivable. ibid.
King Arthur d.579 A.D. who also held the title Arthur Uthyr Pendragon. Marriage: Gwenhwyfawr, Gwenhwyfach, Gwenhwyfar. ibid.
The ruin of St Peter’s Church ... abandoned the turn of the century ... We bought it ... And we did find a stone. ibid.
The King Arthur burial cross. ibid.
This is Arthur’s hill fort. ibid.
The Welsh and British ancient alphabet is identical or nearly identical to the old Etruscan alphabet and the Palladian alphabet. Richplanet TV: The Forensic Historians V: Alan Wilson & Baram Blackett, Wilson
Wilson and Blackett have produced many [Welsh] star/mound maps. ibid.
We’re heading to a place called Ynys-y-bwl which is the location that Alan Wilson strongly believes the Ark of the Covenant is buried. ibid. Richard D Hall
The land of my fathers. My fathers can have it. Dylan Thomas
Years and years and years ago, when I was a boy, when there were wolves in Wales, and birds the colour of red-flannel petticoats whisked past the harp-shaped hills, when we sang and wallowed all night and day in caves that smelt like Sunday afternoons in damp front farmhouse parlours, and we chased, with the jawbones of deacons, the English and the bears, before the motor car, before the wheel, before the duchess-faced horse, when we rode the daft and happy hills bareback, it snowed and it snowed. Dylan Thomas, A Child’s Christmas in Wales
The sight of the English is getting me down.
Fly westward, my heart, from this festering town
On the Wings of a Dove – and a First Class Return –
To the front room of ‘Catref’ at Ynys-y-Wern ...
Glorious welcome that’s waiting for me,
Hymns on the harmonium, Welsh-cakes for tea
A lecture on Marx: his importance today,
All the raptures of love from a Bangor B.A.! Wynford Vaughan-Thomas, Hiraeth in N.W.3
The land of my fathers, how fair is thy fame. Evan James, Land of My Fathers 1856
Wales, Wales, sweet are thy hills and vales,
Thy speech, thy song,
To thee belong,
O may they live together in Wales. ibid.
There is no present in Wales,
And no future;
There is only the past,
Brittle with relics ...
And an impotent people,
Sick with inbreeding,
Worrying the carcass of an old song. R S Thomas, Welsh Landscape 1955
Thy tongue
Makes Welsh as sweet as ditties highly penned,
Sung by a fair queen in a summer’s bower,
With ravishing division, to her lute. William Shakespeare, I Henry IV III i 207
Now I perceive the devil understands Welsh. ibid. III i 233