Llandeilo Lit Fest

Literary Festivals, with the honourable exception of Cymera, tend to be quite unfriendly to genre literature. If anyone doing SF&F is invited, it is likely to be a well known mainstream author who is ‘slumming it’, and whose mediocre attempt is billed as ‘revolutionary’ by people who have never read another SF&F book.

Gŵyl Lên Llandeilo (Llandeilo Literary Festival) is a little different. It is very small, compared to the behemoth of Hay. It is also very Welsh. One of the reasons it is well known in Wales is that 50% of the programming is delivered in Welsh. Simultaneous translation is provided. Being very Welsh, the programme often includes quite a few political and protest-oriented books. Perhaps that is why they let me in. Or it may be because the programme contains a lot of LGBTQ+ books. Or maybe poor Kate thought that if she gave me a slot I would shut up and go away. Who knows? Anyway, this year Wizard’s Tower was on the programme. Result!

The town of Llandeilo reminds me quite a bit of Glastonbury, through without the occultists. It is a small market town that has seen much better days, and which definitely should not have heavy traffic running through it. Glastonbury’s main shopping street now has few cars, but Llandeilo is still on the A483 and has giant lorries threading their way through a road that is barely wide enough for one of them in places. Apparently a bypass is on the way.

The town might be devoid of occultists, but it does now have an independent bookshop. Llyfrau Madfall Swnllyd (Noisy Newt Books) is a lovely little addition to the town, and runs literary events through the year. The town also has a fabulous chocolatier, a lovely little donut shop, and the best hairdresser in Britain (YMMV, but I love her). There are also various craft and antique shops, and an organic grocer, Y Pantri Glas, where you can buy produce from Roz & Jo’s farm.

There is no Tor or Chalice Well, and no Abbey ruin with a tomb of Arthur & Guinevere. But Llandeilo does have Dinefwr Castle, once the home of the great Hywel Dda, and the nearby Newton House stately home. The town is named after St. Teilo who was a friend to the likes of Dewi, Dybrig and Cadoc, and therefore would have known Arthur had he existed. The church houses a digital display of an ancient gospel manuscript which contains some of the earliest known writing in mediaeval Welsh, the real thing having been looted by the English long ago and now housed in Lichfield Cathedral.

This year the festival kicked off on the Friday with a few events at Newton House. I went along to catch up with the brilliant Welsh food writer, Carwyn Graves. The event took place in the dining room of the house, surrounding us with portraits of the Rhys family and their relatives. A man sat behind me was wearing a t-shirt with a picture of Iolo Morganwg on it, and the two older ladies sat next to me were chattering away in Welsh before things got going.

This year Graves was not actually talking about food, despite being accompanied by his long-term partner in food-related projects, the chef, Simon Wright. His new book, Cynefin, is subtitled Wisdom from a Thousand Years of Welsh Nature Poetry. I’ll do a proper review when I have read the book, but suffice it to say that, this being Graves, we ended up talking about Taliesin, Vergil, theories of consciousness and TikTok. He’s wonderfully erudite.

On Saturday morning I was up early for Efa Lois whose book on Welsh witches is reviewed elsewhere in this issue. I didn’t learn much new, but I did ask about the art and Lois revealed that she had been to university in Liverpool and thinks she might have soaked up some of the atmosphere.

The Festival programme had an unfortunate typo in the entry for this one. The book is titled Gwrachod Cymru (Witches of Wales), but in the programme book it is Gwarchod Cymru, which means protecting or taking care of Wales. The word, gwarchod, is also used to describe babysitting. I rather like the idea of all those witches taking good care of Wales.

There were several queer-themed items on the programme, but the one I was most interested in featured Anthony Shapland. I first met him at the Festival two years ago, and it was immediately clear that he was going to be a literary superstar. His debut novel, A Room Above A Shop, has gone on to fulfil that promise. He’s now one of the hottest properties on the Welsh (and indeed British) literary scene.

Shapland didn’t start out as a novelist; he is a film-maker by inclination. One of the things I love about his work is how sharply observed and visual it is. Somehow he manages to describe how his characters are feeling by describing how they move their bodies. Given that the lives of gay men in 20th century Wales were often about keeping very quiet about things, this fits perfectly with the book. There are apparently discussions about a possible film. Shapland says he wants the first few chapters to be without dialog. I hope he gets his way, and some actors capable to carrying it off.

On Saturday afternoon I sat in on a discussion about the history of protest in Wales. The book, Hands Off Wales, by Dr. Wyn Thomas, is primarily a history of protest against the drowning of Welsh communities to provide reservoirs that serve English cities. But Thomas links this to the current protest movement against the erection of an electricity transmission line through the Tywi Valley. Dim Peilonau!, as people say around here.

Clearly the farmers have a right to be upset. They are not losing their homes, as those in the drowned villages did, but they are seeing around a 30% drop in the value of their properties. And if they are on a mortgage, that is very bad news.

On the other hand, while Thomas kept saying that he was not against renewable energy, everything else he said suggested otherwise. In particular some of his facts were badly wrong. It is true that Wales was a net exporter of electricity in 2016, but that was largely thanks to coal and nuclear–fired power stations. With the phasing out of coal, and Wylfa being decommissioned, our exports are now near zero, and we are expected to become net importers in the near future. Because build of renewables has not kept pace with the rest of the UK, electricity generated in Wales is now 58% more carbon-intensive than the UK average. (Data here). This is something that an incoming Welsh government will have to deal with. Meanwhile, and very sadly, I can see a large number of anti-pylons people voting Reform because Reform is standing on an anti-renewables platform.

Sunday was genre day, starting with us. We got a decent crowd to the Fight Like A Girl event, including people who had driven from Tenby and Swansea to be there. Roz, Jo and Lou Morgan were great panelists. I just had to wind them up and let them talk. Of course it helped that we had the superb original launch event at the Hatchet Inn in Bristol to talk about, not to mention Anna Smith Spark’s shoes, but the books are great too. Hopefully we sold some, and will get invited back next year to talk about They Are Still Here.

Immediately that was done, I left Roz, Jo and Lou to deal with the adoring public and rushed off to the Newt to see Peredur Glyn talk about his new book, Anfarwol. Don’t expect a review of that in a hurry as my Welsh is not up to reading it, but it was delightful see an audience at a bookshop in Llandeilo discussing the work of HP Lovecraft, all in Welsh. I got Peredur to sign my copy of his Galwad Cthulhu (Call of Cthulhu).

All in all, it was an excellent weekend. My thanks to Kate Glanville and the rest of the team, and to Rhiannon and her partner at the bookshop. I suspect that I ate too many donuts.