Gareth Huw Davies

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Books / Travel Blog

Under Milk Wood – 70 years on

The BBC first broadcast Under Milk Wood, “‘A Play for Voices”, on the Third Programme on 25 January 1954 (two months after Thomas’s death).  The play featured a distinguished, all-Welsh cast including Richard Burton. Dylan Thomas knew Under Milk Wood was good, even in its hurried, jumbled, unfinished form in which he gave several performances in 1953, with a cast,… Continue reading

Books

How BeaconLit was built – creating a book festival in an English village

BeaconLit 2022 –  this coming Saturday, 16 July, Ivinghoe, Buckinghamshire. The literary festival was launched in 2013.  People keep coming back, to be inspired, informed and to enjoy the beautiful mystery of what happens when you turn a page (in books both physical and virtual). http://www.beaconlit.co.uk In this year’s event former Chief Crown Prosecutor Nazir Afzal will be… Continue reading

Books / Travel

Writing Aylesbury out of a children’s classic: how important are real places in literature?

When The Story of Holly and Ivy was first published, it was set in the Buckinghamshire market town of Aylesbury. In later editions the location was switched to somewhere called Appleton. (There is a village of Appleton in Oxfordshire, but the descriptions in the book don’t fit it.) Has the book lost something as a result? “And where does your grandmother… Continue reading