Happy Christmas!

 

Mari Lwyd -- gruesome but jolly.......

 

A fabulous painting of the Mari Lwyd, posted today on a Facebook page.  Artist unknown......

Rebecca and the Angels audiobook

 

We now have a link to the two Bolinda audiobook versions of "Rebecca and the Angels". It's also available from Audible and other specialist audiobook outlets. Enjoy!!

https://www.bolinda.com/uk/search/results.aspx?/1/-/10/0/1/1/1/1/1/21/Rebecca%20and%20the%20angels

Two New Videos

With the help of Steve we have made two new YouTube videos, featuring snippets from the Bolinda audiobooks of House of Angels and Dark Angel.

That makes three videos featuring the voice of Janine Cooper Marshall as Martha Morgan and little snippets of Steve's music.

If you like, you can subscribe to my YouTube channel! Enjoy ......

On Angel Mountain
https://youtu.be/Htl64L-aTwA

House of Angels
https://youtu.be/dQb5wZDrofA

Dark Angel
https://youtu.be/0q66OpDIayo

Regency Christmas in Wales

 

A charming drawing of a Regency Christmas in Wales -- from Nanteos.  Note the old folks sitting by the roaring fire in the simnai fawr, the string orchestra, the children looking on, and the hanging holly and mistletoe festive ormament!  This looks like a relatively modest house -- maybe Plas Ingli around 1800 would not have been so different.......

A farm kitchen in Wales

 

This is a very touching and respectful painting entitled "Welsh Peasants Reading the Franchise Bill". The artist was Jenny Bond and the date was 1884. It will have surprised many who saw it, around the time it was painted, since the idea that Welsh peasants could read must have been surprising to say the least.  But many of them could read, thanks to the chapels, the Sunday schools and the circulating schools -- and many were quite aware of what was going on in the world.  And many small farmers and labourers were members of the nonconformist chapels too -- where they read the scriptures and even became involved in matters of theological interpretation as deacons and congregation members.

Actually the building in this painting is not a peasant's hovel -- it is a substantial stone interior with beams, reasonable furniture and a simnai fawr.  I would say that this is a typical kitchen of a tenant farmer who maybe had his own animals and who aspired to greater things.  Just like some of Martha's tenants in the Angel Mountain saga.

Ceffyl Pren and Rebecca Riots

A 2017 thesis on the Rebecca Riots has just been made available via the Gutenberg web site.  It's a good introduction as to what happened between 1839 and 1843, and why.  It's written in good simple language and is mercifully free of academic lingo.  Below is an extract which deals with the influence of the "ceffyl pren" tradition on the manner in which the Rebecca Riots were conceived and carried out.  The main emphasis of the study is on the reasons for the "hiatus" in rioting in the years 1840, 1841 and 1842, but there is a lot here which is of interest, with a good citation of sources. 

Finch, A. C. (2017). Rebecca’s Silence: The Rebecca Riots and Why They Vanished for Three Years.
Retrieved from https://ir.una.edu/hmt/1

https://ir.una.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1000&context=hmt

Extract:

Another example of civil unrest - the common man taking laws into his own hands - and precursor to the Rebecca Riots was what was known as the ceffyl pren, or the “wooden horse.” Events such as these foreshadowed the desire for the theatrics and costumes that were so prevalent in the riots. During the ceffyl pren, the events that usually occurred involved an effigy of a person who had broken what was then considered to be the “moral code;” this effigy was carried either on a wooden stick or chair that was held up by the people involved in the event, or on a ladder at the front of a procession.

This procession would parade outside the house of the “guilty” person, to the accompaniment of various noises made by the group, such as the beating of saucepans and other utensils. The purpose of this procession was to draw attention to the breaking of the moral code and to make a laughing stock of the person who had supposedly done the offence. In reference to the view of the ceffyl pren by the people of the time, the newspaper The Welshman notes that:

"Some married parties in the parish of Newchurch, in this County, having been suspected of matrimonial infidelity, the disgraceful exhibition called ceffyl pren, and known in some parts of England by the term riding stang, was paraded through our streets on Wednesday night last, with the usual paraphernalia of torches, &c., at a late hour, and was accompanied by actings……"

This form of the common people taking the law into their own hands naturally was aimed toward fellow citizens and not the government, but it is considered to have inspired many aspects of the Rebecca Riots.

It was not only the style of events such as the ceffyl pren that inspired the Welsh commoners to take the law into their own hands, but the success of these events. Had the ceffyl pren been ineffective, and those involved punished to some extent by the law enforcement of the time, the desire to continue taking the law into their own hands and commit acts of civil disobedience may have waned. However, while the acts involved in the ceffyl pren were ultimately successful, the results were often unpredictable.

No matter the unpredictability, “as a means of social control...there can be no doubt that the ceffyl pren was generally effective. An old woman, who was aged ninety-six in 1858, reported that she had often seen the ceffyl pren in Breconshire used ‘with great effect, as quarrelsome women had a great dread of its appearance’.” The purpose, use, unpredictability, and, yet, ultimate effectiveness of the ceffyl pren is seen by many to foreshadow why the Rebecca Riots were so popular among common people, why the attacks were often sporadic and unpredictable, and, finally, why the people felt their actions would be effective to make some kind of difference regarding the tollbooths of southwest Wales.

Audiobooks on loan

The Angel Mountain novels are at last featuring on the Pembs County Library Borrowbox system, meaning that they are available on loan as downloads.  or they will be -- for some reason they are not actually available until January and February next year.........

Welsh libraries and the Welsh book trade generally are taking a bit of time to adapt to the arrival of audiobooks -- although they have been around for many years now.  We'll get there in the end!

On Angel Mountain:

 https://fe.bolindadigital.com/wldcs_bol_fo/b2i/productDetail.html?productId=BOL_776568&fromPage=1&b2bSite=4170

House of Angels:

https://fe.bolindadigital.com/wldcs_bol_fo/b2i/productDetail.html?productId=BOL_925324&fromPage=1&b2bSite=4170

Dark Angel:

https://fe.bolindadigital.com/wldcs_bol_fo/b2i/productDetail.html?productId=BOL_963571&fromPage=1&b2bSite=4170

It doesn't look as if the physical CDs are available on loan to library subscribers just yet -- but I believe that is coming.

A snippet from Martha's narrative

We have extracted a short section from Martha's narrative in "On Angel Mountain" and have put it onto YouTube.  We hope that it might find a new group of listeners as a result.  Thanks to Steve for his technical help!

Here is the link:

https://youtu.be/Htl64L-aTwA

You may notice that we have used the same music (composed and performed by Steve) as we used in the short film trailer featuring Anna Munro which we released a couple ofyears ago.

House of Angels -- a lost cover

 

When you publish a new edition of a book, you play around with assorted cover designs.  This is one of them for "House of Angels" that didn't get the final vote.......

It's nevertheless rather a nice cover, I reckon.  Created as usual by my son Martin...........

Another romantic ruin

 

I just love these ruins that one picks up every now and then on the satellite imagery.  This one is called Ty-Col, and it's on the mountainside above Dinas.  It appears to be associated with a group of small fields or paddocks, and so it may be something more substantial than a "ty unnos" or one-night cottage that started as an illegal hovel and somehow managed to survive.  From the shape of this one, it looks as if it might have been a typical "longhouse" -- but more research is needed.

Lost farmsteads

Paul Sambrook's map of a mysterious structure at Waun Maes, on the boggy moorland south of Waun Mawn.  It was probably a sheepfold, but are there signs of dwellings and other features nearby?

Came across this very interesting publication: "Lost farmsteads: deserted rural settlements in Wales" (ed. Kathryn Roberts), 2006, CBA Research Report 148, 326 pp.

It's nicely laid out and well illustrated, and of particular interest to Pembrokeshire is Chapter 5, by Paul Sambrook, entitled "Deserted rural settlements in south-west Wales."

 https://archaeologydataservice.ac.uk/archiveDS/archiveDownload?t=arch-281-1/dissemination/pdf/RR148.pdf

Paul made a special study of the Preseli uplands  -- and he describes and classifies several cottage / farmstead types, including shepherds' cottages, hafod or summer settlements, and hovels built and used by vagrants or seasonal workers.  The ones that are difficult to classify or identify are of course the "ty unnos" cottages built illegally and overnight to start with, and then improved and made respectable later on.......

In Martha's story there are a number of episodes involving the building of cottages on the edge of the common and the bitter disputes involving landless peasants and the powerful gentry who sometimes evicted poor people from the common and then illegally enclosed chunks of it themselves........

The terms "hafod", "lluest" and "tyddyn" are often used for these ruined old buildings out in the middle of nowhere.......

Omens and portents

 

In the ongoing work to adapt the Angel Mountain Saga into something suitable for a multi-episode TV costume drama, we have taken a good deal of advice from people who know the industry inside out -- and one thing that they all say is this: "The supernatural element in these stories is a huge selling point.  So make the most of it!"

We don't want to turn the stories into gothic horror tales, sci-fi or fantasy tales like "Game of Thrones" -- that would be to destroy their character and their focus.  So we don't want dragons, or monsters, or aliens.  Just human beings and horses, involved in pitched and bloody medieval battle, so appalling that Martha cannot bear to watch it, and is completely traumatised afterwards.  

But yes, Martha sees things that others do not, and this leads her to be accused of witchcraft on several occasions when it suits her enemies to start whispering campaigns against her.  In this context, her occasional sightings of Battles in the Sky, and her difficulties in understanding what they mean, can be developed as crucial and spectacular story components.

So where does the Pembrokeshire tradition of Battles in the Sky come from?  This is my explanation:

This is something which is not unique to Wales. There are stories of battles being seen in the sky from all over the Western world, and it appears that those who see them are always very frightened by them. Their descriptions of what they have seen and heard are often very detailed, with specific mentions of the sounds of weapons flashing, men screaming, horses neighing and falling to the ground, and clouds of arrows flying through the air. There are not very many stories of battles in the sky actually being observed in Wales, but in my researches I have come across three stories from North Pembrokeshire. All three of them come from the area around Mynydd Morfil and Puncheston. Interestingly enough, in each of the stories the battle was observed by more than one person, and on one occasion the battle was seen above Morfil by two gentlemen who were very frightened by it and who sought refuge in a nearby house. They were given shelter as the battle continued in the sky, observed by the two refugees and by the householder. A feature of these phantom battles is that they seem to be quite prolonged, maybe continuing for more than two hours, whereas most supernatural phenomena appear to come and go within a few minutes or even seconds.

It is difficult to tell from the literature whether phantom battles are spiritual recordings of something which has happened in the past, or whether they are omens or signs of some tragedy to come. When Martha encounters her battles in the sky in the stories, she is in no doubt at all that they are supernatural indications of some tragedy which will soon affect her or those whom she loves -- and of course she is right.

There is much speculation about the occurrence of the battle in the sky in the heavens above Mynydd Morfil, but historians now seem to agree that the location is precisely right for a famous and bloody battle which occurred in the year 1087 when two Welsh armies met. The conflict was really just part of the internal power struggle within Wales following the Norman invasion. The Normans were already moving into Wales, and if the Welsh princes had then united instead of fighting each other, the history of the Norman invasion (and of Wales) might have been quite different. One army, which included many mercenaries from Ireland, landed at Porthclais near St David’s and marched eastwards for one day. The other army, assembled by an alliance of Welsh princes, was marching westwards from Cardigan. Thousands of soldiers fell in the battle, which had no obvious victor -- so it was ultimately quite futile. It was called the Battle of Mynydd Carn, but no historian has ever found its location, and no traces of weapons or burials have been found. Maybe one day archaeological evidence will be discovered to confirm that the battle of Mynydd Carn did indeed take place on Mynydd Morfil or in one of the adjacent valleys.

Dark Angel -- audiobook extract

This is a short snippet from the introduction of "Dark Angel" released by Bolinda to coincide with the issue of the new audiobook.  Enjoy!

Dark Angel and a nice cup of coffee

 

This is the image created by those nice people over at Bolinda to accompany the marketing materials for  the audio version of "Dark Angel."  Quite effective, methinks.......

Audible spots a winner

 

I was quite chuffed when Bolinda told me that Audible -- by far the biggest retailer of audiobooks -- has chosen Dark Angel for one of its "picks of the week" selections.  So here it is on the promotional page, in rather august company.   So let's hope for a tidy boost to sales......

The Nightwalker

 

This is a very atmospheric image which I found somewhere on the web, in a number of different versions.  The weird thing about it is that the phantom figure's shadow is doubled up, and lying in quite the wrong direction, given the position of the moon and the source of the light.  But maybe phantoms don't have to abide by the laws of physics......

Dark Angel Audiobook

The new Bolinda audiobook of Dark Angel flags up the main story of love lost and found, with rather autumnal colouring -- but in the background there is the other story, altogether darker and more sinister.  This is all about the mysterious cloaked figure called The Nightwalker, who seems to be stalking Martha, appearing now and then through the mist and even appearing and disappearing in a snowstorm.  Is he the Grim Reaper?  Or the Devil?  Or just a harmless ghost?  Towards the end of the tale, all is revealed.......

Unchanging Preseli

 

Assorted images of Preseli, published by various people on Facebook.  This really an unchanging landscape -- Richard Fenton and Mistress Martha would have seen essentially the same views.

Ceibwr in a storm

 This is a gorgeous image of those famous rocks at Ceibwr -- published on the Moylgove web site, to whom many thanks.....

How might Plas Ingli have looked?

 Cwrt, not far from Llanychaer, is a good model.  Paul White, whose wonderful photo galleries I much admire, took some photos here before it was rescued and renovated.  Here is a link:

https://www.welshruins.co.uk/about.html

Ravens rule, OK

I had to share this lovely image of a young raven -- thanks to Tony.  It was published in The Star newspaper, and presumably comes from somewhere near Sheffield.  But it could be on Carningli!

Photographer unknown.

Apparently ravens are expanding their range -- having declined seriously over the past century, they are making a comeback, and are reappearing in many urban areas.  So that's a bit of good news in these dismal times.....

The Angel Mountain Show -- now on YouTube

THE ANGEL MOUNTAIN SHOW

SERIES ONE, April 2020

This series of informal chats was first broadcast in April 2020, at the height of the pandemic lockdown.  they were designed to give fans of the series some background information on the narrative and the creative process. Until now, they have just been available to Facebook users,  but now I have put them onto YouTube, so they can be accessed by everybody.  They are a bit rough and ready, and probably need editing, but anyway, enjoy!!

===============

No 1: Preamble

https://www.facebook.com/TheAngelMountainSaga/videos/2399012223691886/

https://youtu.be/Yb75Gp_0BH4

No 2: A funny thing happened…….

https://www.facebook.com/TheAngelMountainSaga/videos/238725063997259/

https://youtu.be/dZ8swgE1HLw

No 3: Martha’s Magic

https://www.facebook.com/TheAngelMountainSaga/videos/268802384158892/

https://youtu.be/2qNHvnTpV3o

No 4: Martha and the Angels

https://www.facebook.com/TheAngelMountainSaga/videos/925589211197047/

https://youtu.be/D_Ih26sjbVg

No 5: Heroes and Villains

https://www.facebook.com/TheAngelMountainSaga/videos/229867721694584/

https://youtu.be/_UcrxdnlaE0

No 6: Eccentrics rule, OK?

https://www.facebook.com/TheAngelMountainSaga/videos/693955801377262/

https://youtu.be/18n-IC6AoAA

No 7: A Very Imperfect Heroine

https://www.facebook.com/TheAngelMountainSaga/videos/565016501065307/

https://youtu.be/ngXnaCJROQg

Martha goes to China

I had fun writing about Martha's visit to China, where she fell in with the Emperor and helped him to get away to a new life in America..........

Here is a short extract:

From Chapter 7 of "Guardian Angel";

Above the cellars of China, and elsewhere too, there were great cinder tips which gave off acrid fumes and occasionally burst into flames for reasons that I could not fathom. They were fed from the coke ovens and blast furnaces, and they covered more land than the iron works and housing areas combined. One or two of the older and cooler cinder tips held communities of troglodytes; homeless children had excavated tunnels and caves inside them, where they felt warm and safe. Safe from adult robbers and thugs, maybe. But God only knows how many of them were suffocated by fumes or crushed when their tunnels collapsed on top of them. Many of the boys belonged to a class known as “the Rodneys” and they survived on begging and petty thieving, sometimes on their own account and sometimes under the control of older and experienced criminals. They measured their status by the number of times they had been arrested and convicted; and they had no respect either for the police or the magistrates. I saw some of them in court, where they postured and bragged, swore at the magistrates and took pleasure in demonstrating that they were beyond control and beyond redemption. They actually seemed to enjoy their short spells in gaol, for there they were able to luxuriate in clean clothes, dry accommodation, and food in their bellies.

http://www.brianjohn.co.uk/guardian-angel.html

A skeleton in Sandy Haven

This is a lovely image from Ruth -- first published on Facebook.  One of the few wooden skeletons left -- this one is quite far up Sandy Haven creek, on the east bank of the river.  I know nothing about it --but there must have been scores of abandoned small trading vessels in the creeks of Pembrokeshire, beached and left to rot when they were no longer profitable to run.

There is another -- in worse condition than this -- close to Lawrenny, just a few yards from the road.

Of course, in the stories, Mistress Martha owned a share in a small trading vessel.......

The Status of the Welsh language in 1750

This map was published on the Heritage and History of Wales Facebook page.  Interesting!  It goes back to the mid-eighteenth century -- a period for which there is not much reliable data.

This is interesting, when we focus on Pembs.  The Landsker is shown as very sharp, with just a narrow band of "bilingual" population between the monolingual (Welsh) north and the monolingual (English) south.  Over time this band of terrain in which the two languages were used got thicker, of course, and the gradual decline of Welsh and the inexorable rise of English can be seen on the langualr maps of the 1800's and 1900's.

I'm interested that on this map we see a stretch of territory northwards to Fishguard in which the two languages were used.  But the Englishry is shown as extending all the way to Laugharne in Carmarthenshire.

Of course things weren't quite as simple as they appear.  There always were Welsh speakers in the south, and English speakers in the north -- the latter mostly associated with the immigration of English speaking wives and husbands who married into the minor gentry.

===============

 

Background info:

Map of Welsh languages 1750. Key: Green: Welsh monolingual population; Pink: Bilingual population; White: English monolingual population. (A map of the languages of Wales 1750. Key: Green: monolingual Welsh population; pink: bilingual population; white: monolingual English population. )

The data is based on research by W.T.R. Pryce - first published in (Data is based on the research of W.T.R. Pryce. It was first published in):
Pryce, W.T.R. (1978). "Welsh and English in Wales. 1750-1971: A spatial analysis based on the linguistic affiliation of parochial communities". Bulletin of the Board of Celtic Studies 28: 1-36.
Pryce, W.T.R. (1978). "Wales as a culture region: Patterns of change 1750-1971". Transactions of the Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion, Session 1978: 229-261., revised and reprinted in: Pryce, W.T.R. (1986) "Wales as a culture region: Patterns of change 1750-1971" in The Welsh and Their Country: Selected Readings in the Social Sciences, Gomer Press ISBN: 9780863832451.

Colin H. Williams gives an overview of research, analysis and Pryce Pryce (Colin H. Williams gives an overview of Pryce's research, grassholysis and methology):
Williams, Colin H. (1990) "The Anglicisation of Wales" in English in Wales: Diversity, Conflict, and Change, Multilingual Matters, pp. 23-30. ISBN: 9781853590313.
Academic works resurfacing Pryce's 1750 language map (Academic works republish Pryce's 1750 language map):
Jones, Mari C. (1998) Language Obsolescence and Revitalization: Linguistic Change in Two Sociolinguistically Contrasting Welsh Communities, Clarendon Press, p. 9. ISBN: 9780198237112.
Cunliffe, Barry W. (2001) The Penguin Atlas of British & Irish History, Penguin, p. 118. ISBN: 9780140295184.
Davies, Jane (2014) The Welsh Language: A History, University of Wales Press, p. 51. ISBN: 9781783160204.

Note: Welsh language data before the census exists in archives such as the church and similar sources. This is the source of W.T.R. Pryce: what was noted by the clerics of the different periods about the language of their churches. From that information, Pryce created four maps for the years: 1750, 1800, 1850 and 1900, showing the distribution of the Welsh speakers as a language every day, areas that were bilingual and monolingual areas English.
Pryce used a point symbols to show his data regarding the language within the parish churches. Lest you complicate the maps, I have not done it. Instead I have focused only on how the linguistic situation was spreading.

My maps, so, are set up on Pryce maps, and reprintments from his maps. By comparing these, it was possible to check my maps. Pryce had blocks of grey and black, and the point symbols - who do the action of analysing them quite difficult, especially from people who haven't used to the subject, data or maps! Because of this, I decided to use color. To make sure the locations are correct I used to use gartograffig software such as Google Maps, Open Street Map and Bing Maps.

Note: Pre-census data on the Welsh language exists in archives such as the church and similar sources. This is the source of W.T.R. Pryce: what the clergy of the different periods noted about the language of their church members. From that information, Pryce created four maps for the years: 1750, 1800, 1850 and 1900, showing the distribution of Welsh speakers as a daily language, bilingual areas and English only areas.
Pryce also used point symbols to show his data regarding the language within the parish churches. I haven’t, as to not over complicate the maps. Instead I have focused only on how the language situation was spreading.

My maps are, therefore, based on Pryce's maps, and reprints of his maps. By comparing these, it was possible to check my maps. Pryce had blocks of gray and black, and the point symbols - which makes the task of analyzing them quite difficult, especially for people who are not used to the topic, data or maps! Because of this, I decided to use colour. To make sure the locations were correct I used cartographic software such as Google Maps, Open Street Map and Bing Maps.

Date 1 September 2020
Source Own work
Author Resnjari

Carnllidi and Ramsey Island

 

This hasn't changed much since Martha's day -- a gorgeous photo taken by Luke Rowlands, and published on Facebook.  Thanks Luke!

Carningli and clouds

A great photo of Carningli and some wonderful cloud  -- it was posted on Facebook a few days ago.  I'm not sure who the photographer was.

Spring did not know -- the poem's origins

As they say, there is nothing new under the sun.  It all started back in March, when we were a couple of weeks into pandemic lockdown.  I first saw the phrase "Spring did not know" around the end of the month, in a rather clunky snippet of a rhyme, on Facebook.   I was struck by it then, and it stayed in my head.  Then the effects of the pandemic got worse and worse, and in early May my sister Heather died.  In the midst of sadness, the poem started to develop in my head, as something talking not just about a pandemic and the way it touches normal lives, but also about loss, and grief, and continuity, and renewal.  So in June I played round with some ideas and some word sequences, and at last wrote the poem down, late at night.  Since then I have changed hardy a word, because I quite like the idea of spontaneity and rough edges..........

I put the poem onto this blog and onto social media, and the few people that read it seemed to like it -- and then suddenly, with my 80th birthday coming up, I had the idea of asking my son Stephen to narrate and record it for me as a birthday present.  We chatted about it, and I wondered about the possibility of setting the narration in the context of some spring / summer /landscape images from my photo collection.  We decided against a musical background.  Steve kindly helped me to put it onto YouTube on August 1st.  The response has been wonderful, and very touching -- almost a thousand viewings in the first week.

So where did the idea come from?  As far as I can make it out, it started on March 21st, in Italy, when the Italian poet Irene Vella read out her poem called "A primavera nao sabia", put it together with gentle guitar music and video clips, and placed it on YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XYRYGscAgRc

Somebody then translated it (probably rather badly) into English, and John Amato sent a short version to the Hudson Reporter ( as a Letter to the Editor) which included the phrase "But spring did not know." The heading was "It was March 2020" -- and that became the name of the Engish version which was then published on Facebook -- no doubt in many guises!

https://hudsonreporter.com/2020/03/22/it-was-march-2020/

Later versions included the line “But spring didn’t know anything”…….

Finally a video with music (that old classic called "The Sound of Silence") was created by Ine RP Braat, and it can be seen here under the title "Coronavirus Poem":

http://www.ine-pps.nl/?page=movies&item=coronavirus_poem_it_was_march_2020

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SDVKfWIWRHs

So there we are then. It's strange how a little phrase can stick in the memory and fire the imagination!

https://youtu.be/si-KKcCRZBs

Spring did not know

SPRING DID NOT KNOW

This has nothing to do with Martha, but my son Steve has recorded my "pandemic poem" and turned it into a video, as an 80th birthday present.  He reads the words quite beautifully, and I love it!  It seems to be much appreciated by many others too, so I am delighted.

House of Angels audiobook published

Volume 2 of the saga is published in the Bolinda audiobook edition tomorrow,  August 1st 2020.  Almost 21 hours of captivating listening, though I say it myself.  The readers (Malk Williams and Janine Cooper Marshall) have done another fine job.

Here's a reminder of some of the reviews:

“Placed in the setting of Angel Mountain and the surrounding countryside, this is an exciting story of intrigue, with villains galore, but given a feminine twist by the heroine Martha and her friends, family and servants."

"The diary format is cleverly used to push the story along -- at the end of each chapter, the reader just has to press on to the next. But one is led carefully through the complex story without ever getting lost.”

“The book portrays the heroine’s complex and changeable temperament and shows how she copes with life in a harsh and cruel world. It shows her humour, her strengths and her weaknesses, and because she is far from perfect one likes her all the more.

"I loved the accelerating pace towards the end of the book, and especially the climax itself.”

“There is a tangible reality about Martha. From the honesty of her diary entries she emerges as no perfect lady but as a flawed heroine. She drags you down with her in her battles against depression and carries you up with her into the bliss of new love and the joys of motherhood.”

The audiobook can be obtained from the Bolinda website, or from Amazon Audible and other audiobook libraries.

Where Martha was jailed -- Haverfordwest Castle

Posted on Facebook -- a lovely pencil drawing of Haverfordwest Castle and the roofs of the town below it -- the artist was Roy Saunders.

The saving of the mountain

A tale linked to the writing of "Guardian Angel", in which a mysterious lady called Susanna Ravenhill quite literally saves the mountain of Carningli from destruction......

In one of those strange conjunctions, I had already started to write this book when the Carningli Graziers Association and the Pembrokeshire Coast National Park signalled their intent to conduct aerial spraying on the bracken covering the lower slopes with a powerful herbicide. Their intentions were no doubt laudable, but immediately there was a cry of  “Save the mountain!” and a multi-faceted campaign built up a powerful momentum in the space of just a few weeks. It was a genuine grass-roots campaign, with no leaders and no orchestration. Local people felt so strongly about the threatened contamination and desecration of this special place that they promised to sit in on the mountain and to lie down in the spraying zone beneath the helicopter -- in full view of the TV cameras. Neither the graziers nor the National Park staff had taken full account of the number of springs on the mountain that are used for private water supplies.  A petition with over 1,000 signatures was submitted to the PCNPA, and with the officers responsible being placed under inexorable and increasing pressure, the proposals were at last abandoned.   In theory, a consent for the spraying was issued, but it was not worth the paper that it was written on, because -- quite deliberately -- so many onerous conditions were attached that the whole project became non-viable.

At the height of the campaign the mountain suddently produced two guardian angels in the form of a pair of hen harriers which were believed to have nested -- for the first time ever -- in the proposed spraying zone. Hen harriers are the most heavily protected birds in the UK. If the spraying had gone ahead, the Graziers and the PCNPA would have committed a serious criminal offence, and would have been liable for arrest and prosecution. The threat to the mountain described in the novel was of a different kind and was on a different scale, but “economic necessity” was the justification in both cases, and if anybody wants to see the novel as an allegory that’s fine by me..........

On not being dead

Guardian Angel and its theme....

The main scenario of this book, namely the apparent death of the heroine and her subsequent full recovery, may seem to be an unlikely one, but it is by no means impossible. There is even a medical name for it -- the Lazarus Syndrome, named after the man whom Christ is reputed to have raised from the dead. There are many recorded instances of successful resuscitations and even spontaneous “awakenings” of those assumed to be dead, and many learned scientific papers on the subject. A key factor in survival seems to be the cooling down of the body and the gradual slowing of all the vital functions to the point where all signs of life appear to be extinguished. The same principle is used in cryosurgery. The greatest danger in resuscitation is that once a clinical death has occurred, brain damage (usually irreversible) will occur if resuscitation does not take place within a few minutes.

It should be remembered that the three key indicators of clinical death in the mid nineteenth century were lack of breath, lack of pulse, and lack of eye movements. Examinations of “dead” people were often cursory and unreliable. In Victorian times there was a dread of being buried alive, and patent coffins were even marketed which would allow “dead” people to alert the outside world if they suddenly woke up and found that they were six feet under! There were many Gothic horror novels in the Victorian period based on the theme of death and resurrection. The Society for the Prevention of People Being Buried Alive (it really did exist!) encouraged a practice whereby the deceased were left lying in their caskets for days or weeks on end before being deemed sufficently dead to bury. When the Duke of Wellington died in 1858, this macabre postponement ritual reached an extreme. The Duke was not buried until two months after his death.

A character a day: (11) Alban Watkins, dastardly squire

Alban Watkins, squire of Llannerch, plays a short but violent part in the story of Martha Morgan and the Plas. He appears early on, as one of a triumvirate of minor gentry (the others are Benjamin Rice and George Howell) who have designs on the Plas Ingli estate.   Why?  Well, like many of the other small gentry families in West Wales, they have limited amounts of land of modest fertility, houses that are grander than they should be, and large debts.  They have vast pretensions, and their ambitions are centred on good marriages for their children and the expansion of their estates -- with the objective of making their estates "safe" before they default on loans or before they get gobbled up by the bigger fish in the pond.  Watkins's estate on the floor of the Gwaun Valley has some water meadows and extensive woodlands but very few dry and fertile fields -- so he lives financially right on the edge.  The Plas Ingli estate borders his -- and it has wider horizons, south-facing fields, and land which is sloping and well drained.  Very desirable.

At the beginning of the story is he just over 40 years old, with a wife and two daughters -- and he needs dowries for them if they are to "marry up" and find wealthy husbands.  He starts off being a drinking friend of the sinister Moses Lloyd, but behind the scenes Moses is becoming more and more indebted since Watkins buys his drinks for him -- and before long Moses has to share his secret about the Plas Ingli treasure with him, with a promise of a share in the spoils when it is dug up.   This then becomes another motivation for Watkins, who is quite happy to see David and Martha and their family (and their new home) destroyed so that the treasure can be recovered.  The problem is that Moses never does tell Watkins exactly where it is  buried.........

Watkins is a big, overbearing, arrogant brute of a man, completely lacking in "sensibility."  Martha has her first clash with him when the three squires and their wives invite themselves to afternoon tea at the Plas.  They seek to intimidate her and demean her, and this gets her hackles up; and she manages to make them look small and very silly when discussions turn to the treatment of labourers, wages, land management, and even the circulating schools.  From this moment on, Martha is Enemy Number One, since she is clearly seen as somebody intent upon the destruction of the old order.......  Enemy Number Two is Grandpa Isaac, with whom Watkins has a dispute about the administration of justice (they are both magistrates).

Alban Watkins is the man behind the fraudulent claim on the Plas Ingli estate which causes David,  Grandpa Isaac and Bowen of Llwyngwair to go rushing off to London to fight the case in the Chancery Court.  The case is thrown out, and Watkins is arrested and later convicted for fraud and other misdemeanours, and shipped off to the penal colonies in Australia.  All of his debts are called in, and the Llannerch estate collapses.  His wife and daughters flee to Scotland.

In House of Angels Martha is terrified when Watkins reappears, having obtained a free pardon in Australia for services to the crown.  (What those services were is a matter for speculation -- but suffice to say that his actions were so depraved and so brutal down under that a price was placed on his head by assorted Irish convicts -- leading to him having his throat slit down on the Nevern Estuary by an assassin.)

All in all, Watkins is not a very nice fellow --  but as he explains at the end of his life in a letter to his daughter Rose,  all of his actions were driven by the determination (at all costs)  to keep his estate alive, and to provide for his daughters.  So he is indeed a villain, but a tragic figure as well.