In the latest ambitious offering from the Real series, Peter Finch takes on the alien land he didn't know was his, until he grew and went to see it. A cotton-wool nation, full of football and big-brother slim-screen television, or a land of demons, where white-robed druids would wail at you through a never-ending mist?

Dyma'r gyfrol ddiweddaraf yng nghyfres 'Real', lle mae Peter Finch yn ymdrin â gwlad ddieithr iddo hyd nes iddo ymweld â hi wedi tyfu fyny. Gwlad gwlân cotwm yn llawn o bêl-droed a theledu, neu wlad yn llawn o gythreuliaid a derwyddon mewn gynau gwynion yn cadw sŵn yn y niwl?

It was Peter Finch’s Real Cardiff, published in 2002, which generated a series of volumes dedicated to different parts of Wales (Swansea, Merthyr, Newport, Wrexham, Aberystwyth), by different authors with Finch as series editor. In this volume, he approaches the whole country in the same spirit – ‘no considered history nor topographical guide, no socio-economic handbook, nor fictional prose.’ It’s a fresh approach; it allows for the personal and the quirky, the accidental and the oddball, and for the unexpected encounter. ‘I discovered a lot. The sheep are many. The rain is often. The light is brilliant. The skies can be huge. The past can be picked up because it is so often near the surface. The past can also never be found again because of what we have done to it. Broken it, built on it, lost it, thrown it away. And there is also the matter of the mysteries, that stuff of Wales which makes things happen, or seem to happen, of which I’ve found no evidence anywhere else. Kings sleeping below rocks. Blood in trees. Wonder in the grass. Future in the air.’

Dividing the country into five regions, here are a few highlights, all of which I was drawn to for the author’s wry humour and wit, together with a deep and unsentimental fondness for his country – the landscape, its people, its mystery, its feisty, elusive and independent spirit: In ‘Actually Banwen’, he is escorted by expert local historian and ex-miner round sites of industrial and more ancient heritage, including the remains of a Roman auxiliary fort where he notes, ‘I can’t see a thing. Just blur and grass.’

Up in the north west, there is a poignant account of an attack of vertigo he endures descending the Watkin path, rather than return on the crowded route he chose for his ascent. Of the climb up he recoils at the volume of human traffic either walking or emerging in heels from the train, ‘God to be communed with among the banter and blather of the leisured class . . . I’d like to be alone, I need to be on my own, can’t do it, this heaving crowd like Saturday Queen Street, the mass mind like a cloud damping out all reason, no space left to think . . . there’s something wholly irreverent about this, like chewing gum at interviews . . .’

There are his fond childhood memories of Aberystwyth, a place he summarises, not without affection as ‘You can’t get lost in Aberystwyth. Steal something and they’ll see you. Have an affair and you’ll be spotted. And the louche trollops of the town, despite Malcolm Pryce, do not wear stove pipe hats. The druids don’t run the milk bars. I couldn’t find the whelk stalls. More arrive than leave, so it seems.’

I think my personal favourite is ‘Cricieth at Night’, in which his extended search for somewhere to eat after 8 p.m. ends with a butterfly of chicken and grilled bacon and cheese with hickory sauce in the basement of the Bryn Hir Arms to the accompanying sound of breaking crockery and expletives from a temperamental microwave chef, before returning to his Bed and Breakfast, with its Beethoven piano roll and unsynchronized violin accompaniment. In its entrance hall he finds the following polite notice framed above the mantelpiece, “We ask guests to refrain from rearranging any of the furniture in this room.” – ‘As if you could. The pieces are as heavy as rhinos. There is no mention of what would happen if you did move anything but none of the people I am with are capable.’

Touching, funny, spontaneous, warm-hearted and keenly observed – it is an excellent addition to the series.

Jane MacNamee

It is possible to use this review for promotional purposes, but the following acknowledgment should be included: A review from www.gwales.com, with the permission of the Welsh Books Council.

Gellir defnyddio'r adolygiad hwn at bwrpas hybu, ond gofynnir i chi gynnwys y gydnabyddiaeth ganlynol: Adolygiad oddi ar www.gwales.com, trwy ganiatâd Cyngor Llyfrau Cymru.