Brittle with Relics: A History of Wales 1962–97 by Mr Richard King

Brittle with Relics: A History of Wales 1962–97 Reviews

• 
  Paul

  Brittle With Relics – This is a book I wish I could write
  
  This is a wonderful book built on the oral history of the Welsh from the 1960s to the formation of the Welsh referendum which brought them an elected Assembly and a semblance of some freedom for London. This book really is about the history of the people of Wales and how they have had to overcome some brutal circumstances which bonded the many communities of the Principality.
  
  Opening with the two man-made disasters one that killed so many children and the other which wiped a community from the map so an English city can ‘steal’ its water resources. This is such a beautifully written book that is multi-layered and multi-voiced one cannot help guilty for the crimes committed against the Welsh in the name of ‘progress’.
  
  The first disaster was the flooding of the Tryweryn Valley in North Wales. This was to create a reservoir that would supply water to Liverpool, something that can only ever be described as an arrogant act that destroyed the Welsh-speaking community of Capel Celyn. The other disaster occurred in October 1966 in Aberfan, the south Wales pit village where, despite warnings of danger, a vast spoil tip slid down a hillside behind Pantglas Junior School, killing 144 people, 116 of them children. Both these catastrophises show the arrogance of the English towards their neighbours.
  
  While the two disasters helped to reignite the campaign for the Welsh language and reignited Welsh nationalism, it also showed how the English bullied their neighbour and was quite happy to ruin Welsh communities without much thought. Which helps to explain the very long campaign of sabotage and disobedience during the 1970s and 80s, which are vividly written about.
  
  We then see during the Miners Strike of 1984-85 the destroying of many industrial communities in the south of the country. Even today when one speaks of the coal fields it is today of the economic and public health disadvantages that these areas are forced to face.
  
  This is a beautiful and visceral book, as someone who has lived in Wales, still makes me side with the Welsh in their anger at the English arrogance of destroying and stealing their country. But with 1997 came new hope. Let’s hope things improve for Wales and the English realise it is a country in its own right.
  
• 
  Sal

  This is a fascinating and vibrant history of modern Wales, thought provoking and immediate.
  I loved the myriad of different voices as the book moved from the Welsh language campaign, Welsh music, and the struggle for Welsh independence, through the miners strike and on to the campaign for devolution. As someone who grew up in Wales during most of this period it brought back a lot of memories, but it also dealt with much that was unfamiliar.
  And that seems to me to also be the major weakness of this book. During this period I lived in Newport, Cardiff and Swansea, attended a Welsh university and worked in cultural heritage, and much of this book was in no way my 'lived experience'.
  An oral history works best when the people interviewed are those most closely involved in the events described. However, by concentrating on those most closely involved in events the story of the majority is rather overlooked. This doesn't lessen the impact of the events being described, but it does skew the perspective of the relative importance of some of those events and movements.
  The majority of people in Wales were not members of Cymdeithas, were not listening to Datblygu and were more concerned with sport than politics. I remember that in my village the campaign for a Welsh language channel was met with a certain amount of amusement. We couldn't even get BBC Wales and had to point our TV aerials over the channel and get our news from Points West!
  
  This was still a thoroughly enjoyable read that has got me tracking down obscure music and finding out more about the events described, but it does ignore the lived reality of so many of us who lived in Wales at this time.
• 
  Ted Richards

  An outstanding oral history, presented with elegance and force. Richard King has put together something superb here.
  
  This will be a tricky review to write and to read. For a while I had a mean spirited joke against the nation of Wales. It began as an ironic ‘dislike’ of Wales, disparaging the country’s status as a subaltern state by contrasting it with Scotland and Northern Ireland. Like many ironic jokes, it was nasty, wilfully ignorant and not that funny. It took far too long for me to figure this out. Humour against states or nations is doable, but it demands more subtly and intelligence than I am capable of. In the end, the ‘joke’ simply became racism. So I decided to read a book about it.
  
  King’s account of Wales is not comprehensive, beginning in 1962 and ending in 1997. From the introduction the work on display here is magnificent. King details the history of the Welsh language and explains his reasons for presenting the history in English. It is an act of faith, between him and the reader, that they will understand this is not a choice he took lightly. King is generally a culture historian, with a focus on music, and this plays a large part in the oral history with singers from Super Furry Animals helping to illustrate the changes that happened in Wales during this period. It cannot be emphasised enough how effective King’s oral history is.
  
  There is an authenticity to the primary accounts here which would be impossible to weave together in a secondary history. Moreover King keeps the reader alongside events with helpful interludes that demonstrate the wider context that these statements concern. One of the best features is that King’s authorial voice is not lost because he is able to sue these interludes to add to the reader’s understanding of past events with contemporary knowledge. This is best demonstrated with the searing indictment of MI5 involvement in Direct Action. Where the primary voices are speculating and supposing, King is able to bring into clarity the degree to which grassroots movements for Wales were undimmed and sabotaged.
  
  This is just one example of the ways in which King illuminates a history which I was ignorant of completely. Events of significant magnitude are brought to life by the variety of voices King has interviewed. The flooding of Tryweryn, the catastrophe of Aberfan, the 1979 Referendum, Meibion Glyndŵr and the Miners’ Strike 1984-1985 are all brought to the centre stage and recalled with extraordinary depth. Several themes course through the history, the principal one being the battle for recognition of the Welsh language. King wrestles throughout the history with what Welsh Nationalism means, and every voice has a different answer. Multiple people have different takes on the extent of Welsh nationalism and the role it played in these years, but King leaves these opinions on the table, for the reader to figure out by themselves. It’s very well done. Structurally, this book is a gold standard of how to deliver a chronological history without sacrificing theme or trend.
  
  One point needs to be addressed. I listened to this as an audiobook and it is well produced. Multiple actors are brought in to give voice to their respective accounts with a couple of celebrity appearances. However, the production is still limited to certain pool of actors who get reused, sometimes back to back, in a single chapter for multiple voices. This can be distracting, and it can also confuse the listener. It was particularly noticeable in the chapter on the 1979 referendum where a single actor voiced two very different viewpoints on opposing sides. This is a generally minor point. With enough attention and comprehension, it is often unnoticeable, but it might distract some people.
  
  Overall, any book that makes me dramatically rethink my life choices and conduct, is going to be a good read. I was wrong to make the ‘jokes’ I made and this showed me just how wrong I was. It is a stunning piece of history and non-fiction writing.
• 
  Alasdair MacCaluim

  Brittle with Relics – a History of Wales 1962-1997 is an oral history looking at all the major events and themes in Welsh life in the period. Everything you’d expect is covered from Tryweryn and Aberfan to Cymdeithas and their direct action for the language to the referendums of 1979 and 1997 and the Miners’ strike. Other topics include hippies and the movement back to the land in West Wales, the Meibion Glyndŵr arson campaign against holiday homes, the peace movement and the growth in the music scene in both languages.
  
  Brittle with Relics really gives you a feel for the period and the key social and economic trends going on at the time through people who were involved in the various different campaigns and events. The discussion of community and the tradition of self education and how community was shattered in the Valleys by pit closures really hits home as does the discussion of the Welsh economy – the collapse of heavy industry and the ultimately unsuccessful attempt to replace it by trying to attract inward investment, doomed by factors such as cheaper labour elsewhere and the advance of technology. The book also looks at the Quango culture in Wales in the 1980s, typified by the Cardiff Bay development.
  
  As a Gaelic speaker, I was particularly interested in the chapter Mudiad Adfer looking at the split in the language movement in the 1970s between Cymdeithas and Adfer, the former promoting the language nationally and the latter calling for concentration on y Fro Gymraeg – the area containing the most strongly Welsh speaking communities in the North and West. Many of the commentators are critical of Adfer as promoting a vision which was often anti Welsh-learner and and as often using sinister right-wing “blood and soil” language. Interestingly, this closely parallels the current situation in Scotland where a minority of the Gaelic movement have been calling for Gaelic development to focus solely or almost solely on the most strongly Gaelic speaking areas (the Outer Hebrides, Skye and Tiree) and who are concerned as to who is or isn’t ethnically a “Gael” rather than seeing Gaelic as a language belonging to all its speakers including fluent learners. This ethnicist vision also sometimes doesn't see Gaelic as being a language relevant to all of Scotland. This has caused a damaging and unnecessary split.
  
  Things have moved on in the language debate in Wales and hopefully they will move on in Scotland too, enabling us to escape what is essentially a 1970s debate and embrace a diverse and pluralistic national language community based on the society of 2023 which recognises that Gaelic development isn’t a zero sum game – and also takes Gaelic development in the traditional communities way more seriously.
  
  In conclusion, I’ve read many books about Welsh politics, sociolinguistics and history but this has been the most fun to read! This is essential reading for anybody interested in Welsh history – particularly radical Welsh history.
• 
  Ivan Monckton

  A stunningly good book!
  Over 500 pages on the history of Wales over a 35 year modern period...overkill would probably be most people’s first thought, but in fact, it being mainly oral history, I kept wondering what others made of the events and themes outlined, and also wishing that other themes had been covered!
  Extraordinarily, despite living in Wales for two thirds of the period covered, and having had dealings with a number of those quoted, I was almost completely unaware of much that was going on in my adopted country. I loved the range of people and opinions offered, and have revised my views on many of the politicians, from various parties (though not on Kinnock!) who participated. For anyone wondering why Tories fare so badly in Wales, the answers are here aplenty.
  Richard King is an outstanding writer and I thoroughly recommend this book.
  One quibble, a very short biography of all contributors as an appendix, would have made the book even more enjoyable and easier to navigate.
• 
  Kirsty Le Dain

  This book should be essential reading for every Welsh person, particularly those under 40. It gave an astonishingly detailed account of Welsh history over the last 60 years. It never ceases to amaze me that none of this is taught in Welsh schools.
  
  My only criticisms of this book would be that I found the text version to be hard to read given the constant switching of perspectives. This was much easier in audio form, so that is the form in which I decided to read the book. I also felt that the book shied away from why Ron Davies resigned from his position as First Minister - and given the fact that some of the contributors were discussing how things may have developed better had he not been made to resign, I think this was an oversight.
• 
  Joe Waters

  This looked like quite an intimidating undertaking, so I put off reading it for a while after getting it for Christmas. Followers, I’d been a fool to do so. This is a remarkable oral history of modern Wales. Best non-fiction I’ve read in ages.
• 
  Billy Jones

  An interesting and clever retelling of modern Welsh history through a collection of anecdotes, memories, vignettes and reflections. Through these, we get the tenor of our times. Completely engrossing.