Wales Archives | Lucienne Boyce

Jill by Amy Dillwyn, (Honno Welsh Women’s Classics, 2013, first published 1884)

Amy Dillwyn’s novel, Jill, introduces one of the most entertaining heroines I’ve come across in a long time. She’s selfish, ruthless, cynical, and often funny; a character who is a …

None So Blind, Alis Hawkins (Canelo, 2021, first published 2018)

Between 1839 and 1843, the Rebecca rioters of west Wales rode out at night to tear down toll gates and make their protest against the high tolls charged on the …

The Contraband Killings Blog Tour 5 – 11 December 2022

The Contraband Killings: A Dan Foster Mystery is on a blog tour this week (5-11 December 2022). The tour will feature unique extracts, reviews and guest blogs. The schedule is …

My Month in Books: March 2022

I look at two stories of twentieth-century working-class lives this month – Raymond Williams’s 1960 novel, Border Country, and Dorothy Whipple’s High Wages. Williams explore the lives of a family …

My Month in Books: January 2022

My selections for this month are two wonderful novels which, though set in very different milieus, both explore themes of marriage, family and powerlessness: Feet in Chains by Kate Roberts, …

Winifred Coombe Tennant and Whittinghame

Back in 2016 when I first started researching the life of Welsh suffragist Winifred Coombe Tennant (1874-1956) I visited the West Glamorgan archives in Swansea to look at the Coombe …

My Month in Books: May 2021

The two books I’ve chosen to write about this month are Sylvia Townsend Warner’s The Corner That Held Them, and the non-fiction Welsh Legends and Fairy Lore by D Parry-Jones, …

The Women Are Revolting: Charles G Harper and the Ladies of Llangollen

I’ve been reading The Holyhead Road: The Mail Coach Road to Dublin by Charles G Harper. It’s a whopping two-volume work, with each volume being around 300 pages. Harper (1863-1943) …