Wales Archives - Bristol Radical History Group

Copper, Coal and Colonizers: The Welsh in the West Country and their impact on Bristol’s past

Exploring the Welsh people and places that helped shape the city’s history, from colonists to Chartists, enslavers to abolitionists – with the odd pirate and colonial governor thrown in for good measure. A two hour walk from M Shed to the Colston stump via Welsh Back and the Llandoger Trow. Meet outside the front of M Shed.

Putting Welsh history on TV

This talk with video extracts, will look at attempts to turn the complexities of Welsh history into accessible television. It will include clips from Horrible Histories, Huw Edwards’s The Story of Wales and the ground-breaking and much-loved series, The Dragon Has Two Tongues in which Wynford Vaughan Thomas and Professor Gwyn Alf Williams offered two very different versions of Welsh history. The latter series, produced and directed by Colin Thomas in 1985, was recently described by […]

Gafael Tir – A history of land rights and protest in Wales

Gafael Tir, the Welsh sister show to the popular Three Acres and a Cow, is presented in collaboration with Bristol Radical History Group. The show explores the history of ‘y werin’ (the Welsh common folk) and their struggle for a better life. Their tales are told and old ballads sung as we meet kings, crossdressing farmers, radical preachers, land workers and unions; a thousand years of history. Drawing on Welsh folk arts, the show touches on politics, human rights, freedom of thought and […]

Putting History on Television

Producer/directors David Parker and Colin Thomas have both challenged conventional approaches to television history in their productions: David by tapping into home movie archives and by seeking out 'history from below' contributors in West Country series like Reel Lives; and Colin by including different historical perspectives within the same programme. Michael Sheen described The Dragon Has Two Tongues, a series on Welsh history which Colin made for Channel 4, as “one of the greatest history […]

The role of Museums in constructing our understanding of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade

By Rosemary L Caldicott, Roger Ball

As I worked on gathering pertinent words that will appear in the index of my forthcoming book: The Journal of Captain Thomas Phillips of Brecon, the Slave Ship Hannibal, and all who Sailed on Her (1693-1695) the key word ‘museum’ appears on my list. Why had a word associated with exhibition interjected itself into a narrative of events that had occurred nearly 330 years ago? To answer this question, I refer to the plaque commissioned by Brecon Town Council in 2010 to honour the life of the slave […]

The role of Museums in constructing our understanding of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade

By Rosemary L Caldicott

Black Lives Matter banner displayed in Brecon

As I worked on gathering pertinent words that will appear in the index of my forthcoming book: The Journal of Captain Thomas Phillips of Brecon, the Slave Ship Hannibal, and all who Sailed on Her (1693-1695) the key word ‘museum’ appears on my list. Why had a word associated with exhibition interjected itself into a narrative of events that had occurred nearly 330 years ago? To answer this question, I refer to the plaque commissioned by Brecon Town Council in 2010 to honour the life of the slave […]

‘Spies and Troublemakers in Wales – 1914-1918’

Aled Eirug author of The Opposition to the Great War in Wales 1914-1918 (UWP, 2018) looks at the activity of intelligence agencies in South Wales during World War One, and the blacklisting of activists within the peace and labour movements.

The Fight for Monad

By Raymond Williams

Raymond Williams’s novel, The Fight for Manod was first published in 1979. As we know, 1979 was an important year, seemingly a watershed year. In this year Margaret Thatcher was elected, and Ronald Regan launched what was to be his successful presidential campaign. Yet the social forces that pushed them into prominence and the form of capitalism on stilts now commonly known as Neoliberalism didn’t of course suddenly emerge overnight from nowhere. Like deadly toadstools, the mycelium that brought […]

The Dragon has two tongues rises again…

By Randell Brantley

After more than 35 years in obscurity the hugely influential TV series The Dragon Has Two Tongues, a history of Wales, has risen again. This week the Welsh Underground Network made the following statement: Subject of copyright strikes, legal threats, and much discussion, we are extremely proud to host every episode of ‘The Dragon has Two Tongues’, the classic series featuring Gwyn Alf Williams and Wynford Vaughan-Thomas debating Welsh history. First broadcast over forty years ago, each attempt […]

‘Triptych’ A poem by Marvin Thompson – Slaver Captain Phillips of Brecon (1693-1694)

A Poem by Marvin Thompson

On the weekend of 7-9 June 2020 the Brecon plaque to a slave trading captain was stripped from the wall on which it was erected in 2010. Poet Marvin Thompson was inspired to write the following poem: On the Anniversary of the death of George Floyd: Dear Brecon Town Council, A mouth drying to mud, tightening lungs and eyes on the edge of tears: that was the reaction of my Black British body when, on this wind-lash of a lockdown morning, I read who you class as a role model for my Welsh, Mixed […]