Wales: History, Politics, Culture

  When the Devil Visited Wales When I was at school it was considered de rigueur for boys in the fifth form to read certain novels. James Herbert’s gruesome work, The Rats comes to mind. As does the author Dennis Wheatley who wrote a number of horror thrillers between the 1930s and the 1960s. Wheatley died in 1977 and I recall watching him on a television programme around that time declare that “the devil is a real person.” Thomas Sheridan has described Wheatley, with his detailed accounts of magic rituals as a whistle blower on the upper echelons of the British ruling class and what they get up to behind the scenes in their mansions and stately homes. One of the more famous of his novels is The Devil Rides Out , a 1934 tale in which the heroes, the Duke de Richleau and his colleague Rex Van Ryn rescue their friend Simon Aron from the clutches of a satanic group operating from a stately home on Salisbury Plain. The novel was later made into a film replete with rituals and car...

  Only Nixon could go to China . . . Prior to the Norman Conquest, Wales had managed to largely preserve its independence, albeit in a somewhat chaotic form. It had its own language, literature and legal system. The country’s weakness lay in its political fragmentation, a situation the Normans were quick to exploit. In the south, the invaders were held up for a time by the policies and military prowess of the Lord Rhys and his successors.   In the north, various attempts were made to create a unified Welsh state. Unfortunately, the death of Llywelyn ap Gruffydd in 1282 marked the end of that venture and for Welsh independence in general. But not of Welshness. At first, the new regime appeared to work. The language continued in common usage and while the English criminal law was introduced, the Welsh civil law was not abolished. Nevertheless, the fourteenth century was a time of growing social and racial tension in Wales. The crisis had many contributory factors: a ...