Get A Writers House In Wales Assembled By Jan Morris Readable In Paperback

is a beautiful, vivid, cozy, melancholy little book about Wales, It has made me sort of despair of writing any more about Welsh history and mythology without visiting North Wales, but these things happen.
I am going to have to seek out more Jan Morris,

I would recommend that readers start with the afterword about the Welsh language, in order to avoid mentally butchering the pronunciation of the Welsh names.
Contemplative. Morris invites the reader to tea, tenderly describing her house as a microcosm of Welsh culture and history, ”At first sight, Im sure you will agree, it is nothing much to look at, There are lots of such buildings in our part of Walessolid old stonebuilt farm buildings, apparently timeless, built of big rough boulders and roofed with slate from the mountain quarries.
Many of them are crumbled now, but many more will shelter cattle, and some have been converted like mine into dwelling places.
Whatever their condition, they are impregnated with Welshness, Their very stoniness, their modest strength, their moss grown stones and wooden doorstheir texture, substance and style are all organic to this particular corner of Europe.
”

National Geographic Directions commissioned a series of books written by leading authors about places that are near and dear to them.
They include authors such as Oliver Sacks, Jamaica Kincaid, Robert Hughes, William Kittredge, David Mamet, Francine Prose, Peter Carey, Barry Unsworth, and Geoffrey Wolff to name a few.
I happened to spy a few of these books on sale in one of my favorite catalogs Daedalus Books If you dont get their catalogs you should sign up right now.
a few years ago and bought this one by Jan Morris and the one on Nova Scotia by Howard Norman.
When they arrived I made room for them on my travel shelves and promptly forgot about them,

By happy coincidence I was rummaging around my shelves just the other day and A Writers House in Wales dropped into my lap.
I dont ignore fateful things like that so I leaned my back against the bookshelf and started to read, I zipped through pages until Jan started talking about wine,

”I boast of having drunk a glass of wine every day since the Second World War, but young and simple wines are the ones I most enjoy, fresh from the vineyards, with none of your vaunted bouquets of leather or of pomegranatewines, as Evelyn Waugh once wrote of Cretan vintages, lowly esteemed by connoisseurs.
”

After reading that line I was compelled to search out a bottle of wine, Luckily I had such a low brow vintage in my wine cellar that would be the refrigerator in the garage.


We can continue now,

Jan told me about her ancestors and it was as if I were sitting there in Trefan Morys with wine in hand and a kettle on for tea.
She inherited a grand estate in Wales, but the house was too big for her and her significant other so they sold the main house and kept the outbuildings.
She converted the stable into a home,

She had me looking through my shelves for a copy of Tristram Shandy,

”My English uncle had gone to battle like a Rupert Brooke, and wrote proudly of it to his fatherexalted by the honor of the challenge, head high, with a copy of Tristram Shandy in his jacket pocket when the fatal blow struck him.
”

I found A Sentimental Journey, but no Tristram Shandy, Bloody hell!

Speaking of books Jan Morris has over,books in her house, They did swipe all the bookshelves from the main house before they sold it, Most people dont have enough nicknacks for that many shelves anyway, She tried to convince me she wasnt a collector because she doesnt care about first editions, but as she took me through her library she kept showing me all these books with signatures, association copies between writers and key public figures, so I remain unconvinced that she isnt a book collector.
There was one Welsh citizen that had,volumes in his house when he died, Collectors have to always have a story like that to show that there are people crazier than we are,

She gave me thumb nail sketches of the history of Wales, She talked of long dead kings and slumbering heroes, The last king of Wales was killed inby Edward I of England, The Welsh refer to him as Llywelyn Ein Llyw Olaf, . . Llywelyn Our Last Leader.

But we were talking about a house,

In the Valley of the Elwy

I remember a house where all were good
To me, God knows, deserving no such thing:
Comforting smell breathed at very entering,
Fetched fresh, as I suppose, off some sweet wood.

That cordial air made those kind people a hood
All over, as a bevy of eggs the mothering wing
Will, or mild nights the new morsels of spring:
Why, it seemed of course seemed of right it should.


Lovely the woods, waters, meadows, combes, vales,
All the air things wear that build this world of Wales
Only the inmate does not correspond:
God, lover of souls, swaying considerate scales,
Complete thy creature dear O where it fails,
Being mighty a master, being a father and fond.

Gerard Manley Hopkins

I wanted to share that poem with everyone so that the next quote from Jan makes more sense.


”Anyway Hopkinss cordial smell of the woodsmoke certainly permeates our kitchen, if only because the timbers of its roof have been breathing it since before the American Revolution.
The substances of this house are profoundly organic, Most of the timbers that sustain it come from the Trefan woodlands, down to the river, and they are numbered still for the benefit of the haulers who dragged them up here with their team of horses.
A few, straighter and stouter than the rest, came from ships timbersships wrecked, I dare say, on the seacoast a mile or two away.
”

She brings up her transsexual experience when she slipped out from behind the mask of James and blossomed into Jan as a way to explain the character of her Welsh neighbors.


”When thirty years ago, I did the unimaginable and went through what is vulgarly known as a change of sex, the Wils, The Mr.
Owens, the Blodwens, the mailman and the family up the lane took it all easily in their stride, and from that day to this have kindly pretended that nothing ever happened.
”

She talks of schooners specially built to haul slate to all parts of the world from the quarries of Wales.
Of men who had never left the village that now were asked to see oceans and ports all over the world.
A Norwegian SkogKatt makes an appearance from the back gardens with proof of his hunting ability grasped in his teeth.
There is Mozart and timbers and wine and boulders and books and snug comfort in a stable in Wales,

So spend a day with Jan Morris, . . oh and dont forget to sign her visitors book before you leave, One name per page. When you return, if you are lucky enough to return, she will have sketched and written things around your name so she will always remember the day she spent with you.


Link to National Geographic Directions sitelink longitudebooks. com/find/d/ When working with data, I find it way too easy to dehumanize people, I mean, its all numbers, So reading this book helped me visualize Wales better, Its not just that Aberavon had,eligible voters in theelections, Its that Aberavon is a real place with real people, Each one of those people woke up that morning inand decided whether to go vote,,chose to vote. Maybe some of them got into an argument with their relatives over their vote, Some of them might be unhappy with their vote, maybe some of them celebrated the results, Thinking about this makes working with data much more fun,

In this sense, reading this book was exactly what I needed, With lovely writing, Jan Morris starts off with a brief history of Wales, She then moves to a description of her own area, and finally, her own house, Morris comes across like a lovely aunt, hosting us in Wales, She manages to bring this warmth with her in writing,

Morris seems to be very proWelsh independence, This is obviously not something I can or intend to comment about, other than saying that I found it interesting.
Her descriptions make it very clear that nationalism truly isnt about race as much as it is about culture and peoplehood.
Her

celebration of Welsh culture, history and heritage was beautiful to read, I have a tendency to focus on the ugly sides of nationalism, I see how it poisons and increases conflicts, So seeing Morris love for Wales in soft and happy light was interesting, Its hard not to fall in love with Wales, as she sees it, I found myself sharing her frustration about the erasure of Welsh culture,

I am, however, going to take a moment to criticize the way she speaks of the IsraeliPalestinian conflict.
It was quite a few pages of this book and it frustrated me, I dont know what is it with people living on that island and their constant desire to compare themselves to us but can they stop

First of, Morris mentions “Palestinian Jews”.
There are no Palestinian Jews yes, none Samaritans arent Jews, By Palestinian Jews, the intention is Jews living in Mandatory or Ottoman Palestine prior to the establishment of Israel in.
None of those people identify as Palestinian Jews anymore so presenting it as though this is a fight between various Palestinians is misleading.
This is no civil war, It hasnt been a civil war since,

Secondly, portraying the IsraeliPalestinian conflict as though the Jews are foreigners who get pity points for the Holocaust is a common and false misconception.
Jews came to Palestine prior to the Holocaust, The Jewish connection to the Land of Israel goes far far beyond the Holocaust, Stop removing Jewish agency. Certainly, Israel gained UN support due to pity from the Holocaust but there would be no Israel without the decades of support for it before the Holocaust.
Israel didnt pop into existence between, When we do economics research about Israel, we start withas Israel had a functional economy then, prior to independence.


And please, dont compare the Welsh to the Jews, With all due respect to the Welsh, the Jewish experience as a people in the Diaspora is simply different, Jews were expelled from overcountries and experienced several genocides as a minority, how does that compare to the Welsh experience as a people fighting for their rights on their land

To conclude, this book was very charming.
I wish Morris could invite me over for tea, If you're looking for a neat intro to Wales, I think this book definitely provides that,

What Im Taking With Me:
I love reading a book and then discovering that the author is a successful trans person
Almost three quarters of Welsh people say they have no Welsh skills.
Meanwhile,of Israeli Jews and overof Israeli Palestinians/ Arabs have a good understanding of Hebrew, So please, sit down and take notes, Welsh wishes it could be Hebrew,
I feel like Jan votes for Plaid Cymru, based on her fond tone when she speaks of Welsh nationalists



I didquizzes to see who I should vote for in the UK yes, this is totally an important part of my bachelor thesis, this is how research goes.


My results were SNP, Plaid Cymru and the Green party, I didn't realize I intuitively lean towards supporting Scottish and Welsh independence I don't even have any real or educated opinions about this, I'm just here like "languages are good! independence is good! preserving cultures is good! international cooperation is good!"

to come!.