Böcker av Alun Richards

Carwyn James treated rugby football as if it was an art form and aesthetics part of the coaching manual. This son of a miner, from Cefneithin in the Gwendraeth Valley, was a cultivated literary scholar, an accomplished linguist, a teacher, and a would-be patriot politician, who also won two caps for Wales. He was the first man to coach any British Lions side to overseas victory, and still the only one to beat the All Blacks in a series in New Zealand. That was in 1971, and it was followed in 1972 by the legendary triumph of his beloved Llanelli against the touring All Blacks at Stradey Park. These were the high-water marks of a life of complexity and contradiction. His subsequent and successful career as broadcaster and journalist and then a return to the game as a coach in Italy never quite settled his restless nature.After his sudden death, alone in an Amsterdam hotel, his close friend, the Pontypridd-born writer, Alun Richards set out through what he called "e;A Personal Memoir"e; to reflect on the enigma that had been Carwyn. The result, a masterpiece of sports writing, is a reflection on the connected yet divergent cultural forces which had shaped both the rugby coach and the author; a dazzling sidestep of an essay in both social and personal interpretation.

Alun Richards casts his baleful eye on the central valleys of twentieth-century South Wales from the 1930s to the 1970s, the personal relationships and social ambitions of the inhabitants of this much-fabled country. Includes the best of his short stories, as funny and savage as they are scathing and compassionate, combined with his entrancing autobiographical memoir Days of Absence.

Presents short stories, written by Welsh men and women, for the most part about Welsh people, providing depictions of valley and mountain, country and town, as well as insights into the nature of the people.