Tag: humour

The recent actions of Black Lives Matter (BLM) protesters tearing down statues of the slave owner Edward Colston in Bristol has drawn public attention to memorials as never before. People question why we ought to remember so many horrible white men (97.5% of human statues in the UK are of men). For academic Claudia-Florentina Dobre, […]
To access this content, you must be a subscriber to New Welsh Review. Subscribe today Existing subscribers, log in to view this content.
Free content

Pondweed

This is a sparkling, funny novel, largely successful in honouring the complexities of late-flowering love, writes Mandy Sutter

PUBLISHED ON: 28/07/20

CATEGORY: Reviews

When pond salesman Selwyn comes home one afternoon towing his firm’s exhibition caravan and tells his ‘like-wife’ Ginny to get into the car, all she c …

Read more
Subscribers only

Early Twentieth-century Welsh Plays in English, Vol 1: ‘A Dirty Broth’

Chris Moss assesses how this anthology of classic plays (including Taffy by Caradoc Evans) identifies the factors that deprived Wales of a recognisable tradition of playwriting and how these three plays share themes of religion, community, identity and family

PUBLISHED ON: 28/07/20

CATEGORY: Reviews

The first volume of a two-book series devoted to Welsh writing for the theatre,  A Dirty Broth, contains the complete texts of just three plays. You m …

Read more
Free content

Insomnia

Lee Tisdale admires a novella, published complete with its own censorship history, satirising Soviet rule in Latvia

PUBLISHED ON: 30/06/20

CATEGORY: Reviews

Alberts Bels’ accessible and compelling novella Insomnia depicts Soviet-era Latvia through the eyes of Mr Eduards Dārziņš. This man allows a fleeing w …

Read more
Subscribers only

Pravda Ha Ha

Jemma L King is intrigued by this exploration, comic in parts, in which a return to Russia 30 years on from the fall of the Berlin Wall, reveals the rise of the Right and how the little guy was shafted in the interim, and the stupid became unjustifiably wealthy

PUBLISHED ON: 02/03/20

CATEGORY: Reviews

Jemma L King is intrigued by this exploration, comic in parts, in which a return to Russia 30 years on from the fall of the Berlin Wall, reveals the r …

Read more
Subscribers only

Parch (series 2)

Dewi Huw Owen on series 2 in the comic drama series ('Wales' riposte to The Vicar of Dibley') by Fflur Dafydd, set in Carmarthenshire

PUBLISHED ON: 19/02/20

CATEGORY: Reviews

The second series of the S4C drama, Parch, came to a hauntingly ambiguous end two Sundays ago, having delighted audiences for eight weeks with its fin …

Read more
Subscribers only

No Good Brother

Suzy Ceulan Hughes

PUBLISHED ON: 27/07/18

CATEGORY: Reviews

The opening paragraph of Tyler Keevil’s third novel draws the reader in immediately: The end of the story is pretty well known, since people wound up …

Read more
Subscribers only

Bad Ideas/Chemicals by Lloyd Markham

Eluned Gramich

PUBLISHED ON: 30/01/18

CATEGORY: Reviews

‘Some authors try to do weird. Some writers write weird. Lloyd Markham is weird.’ When I read Chris Meredith’s recommendation of this début novel, I a …

Read more
Subscribers only

Drunk in Bed with a Book on Evolutionary Psychology

Michael Derrick Hudson

PUBLISHED ON: 01/09/17

CATEGORY: Poetry

I hate chimpanzees. I hate their screeches and ha ha ha’s and their eyes glittering with malice. I hate their nitpick grooming, their complicated hier …

Read more
Subscribers only

The Library Suicides: Page to Screen

Fflur Dafydd on the novelist’s demotion in the process of adapting her offbeat dystopian novel into a straight thriller for the screen. Y Llyfrgell (The Library Suicides), directed by Euros Lyn, goes on general release on 5 August

PUBLISHED ON: 01/08/17

CATEGORY: Opinion

 Writing an adaptation of your own novel is like performing appendectomy on yourself.                       Calder Willingham   Willingham’s sent …

Read more