A brief introduction and a few shared thoughts on my Dewithon book choice for 2026…

“While I usually avoid any opportunity to get out of my comfort zone, it does feel good sometimes to surge forward like a bookish panther into new places instead of shifting sideways like a literary crab.”
– Alex Johnson

A book about discovering Wales through books? Well, how could I possibly resist? Just the thing, too, for Reading Wales 2026.

Made up of short chapters (none over three or four pages in length) that cut straight to the heart of each text without giving everything away, this volume offers a painless first approach to a vast subject. Rather than adopting a heavily analytical stance, writer and journalist Alex Johnson wears his academic, Cambridge‑educated cloak very lightly, making My Year of Reading Welshly an ideal companion for readers keen to explore the works of Welsh poets and writers beyond those already familiar to them.

The son of librarians (both of whom studied at Bangor University in the 1960s), he freely admits from the outset to not being Welsh and confesses to “never [having] lived in Wales”, though there are extenuating circumstances. He asks you to “bear with” him as he explains that he was “born in the Welsh Marches” and grew up in “a small market town” on the border of Wales where, glancing westward from his school, he enjoyed unobstructed views of the Welsh countryside. Coupled with his remark that it is “hard not to find Wales and its culture appealing”, plus he regularly spends time in Cymru, I would suggest he was eminently suited to the task of reading fifty‑two Welsh books in a year, written in (or translated into) English and published between 1924 and 2024.

There are a handful of classics included that many of you will recognise, such as How Green Was My Valley, Under Milk Wood and One Moonlit Night; and some lesser‑known works that have sidled onto my shelves over the years, such as In Parenthesis (1937) by David Jones and the “unremittingly grim” Brothers (1983) by Bernice Rubens. However, there are a fair few titles here that are entirely new to me – several of which piqued my interest. I am especially keen now to find The Battle to the Weak (1925) by Hilda Vaughan – described as depicting “the arrival of a new way of thinking in Wales”; Pigeon (2016) by Alys Conran (“When the twist comes, it’s a cracker”); and The Blue Book of Nebo (2022) by Manon Steffan Ros – a story about the “near-destruction of civilisation” that takes an “upbeat approach to what [the author] labels ‘The End’.”

“The Owl Service is interesting on so many levels. This is the first book where accidentally including major spoilers here would not be an issue because simply revealing what happens on the final pages would make no sense unless you’d read the previous 200.”

Johnson’s book may not be aimed at experts in Welsh literature, but he never hesitates to offer forthright opinions, whether warmly enthusiastic or otherwise. Even his sharper comments tend to be more cheeky than unkind, and he is quick to puncture pretension wherever he finds it. Like a connoisseur of the Welsh whelk, he deftly extracts the sweetest meat^* from the shell and offers it to his readers as a taster. At the close of each entry, he poses and answers the same four questions, creating a playful sense of rhythm and expectation that carries the reader from one book to the next:

1. Why this book matters…

2. Read it because…

3. Give it a miss if…

4. What I discovered…

His answers are invariably humorous but also pointed and perceptive.

Johnson emerges as an inveterate writer of books-about-books, yet he is far from a literary snob; his reviews are delightfully irreverent, and the sense that he thoroughly enjoyed both planning and penning this volume makes it all the more pleasurable to read. I’m also taken with the way he shares marginalia found in second-hand copies and reflects on his own notetaking habits – he clearly understands the likely quirks of his intended readership. The book, in fact, reminds me of delving into a bag of mixed sweeties (‘candies’ to our friends across the water): it contains an assortment of colours, shapes and flavours, you never quite know what you’re going to get next, and it is a real joy to dip into.

We encounter curiosities such as The Meat Tree (2010) by Gwyneth Lewis – a modern retelling of the Mabinogion; Ron Berry’s So Long, Hector Bebb (1970), described as a “forerunner to Irvine Welsh’s Trainspotting”; and completing Johnson’s “Welsh jigsaw”, a culinary memoir about growing up as “the daughter of a cordon bleu chef to the pop stars who attended the famed Rockfield recording studio in Monmouthshire”: My Family and Other Rock Stars by Tiffany Murray.

There are also, he tells us, a fair number of “sheep in the valley” books, such as Owen Sheers’ Resistance (2007), though this is an observation rather than a criticism. We are additionally cautioned to avoid The Dig (2014) by Cynan Jones if we “don’t want to read about animal cruelty” (in this case, badger baiting). It would be wise, he says, to give it “the widest of berths.”

There was only one book he truly disliked – I’m looking at you The Old Devils by Kingsley Amis – which won the Booker Prize in 1986. His criticisms are very funny, delivered with a kind of exasperated relish, and he can’t resist returning to the novel several times throughout Welshly. Set in Wales, he characterises it as Amis assembling “a line-up of Roald Dahl grotesques who feel interchangeable”, each defined by a single trait (i.e. dull, alcoholic, fat…). He also finds that the “thread running through the [novel] about Welshness and fake Welshness [is] completely undeveloped.” Nonetheless, he does concede that “anything that wins the Booker can’t be all bad”, though he pointedly fails to identify a single redeeming feature beyond admitting, through gritted teeth, that Amis writes “readably” enough.

Should you be wondering whether Johnson completed his mission in the allotted time, I’m keeping shtum. If you’re desperate to know, you’ll simply have to read the book.

Incidentally, I was delighted to see fellow book blogger Ann Morgan and her “feat of reading a book from every independent country on the planet” acknowledged in the Introduction. And I simply can’t resist adding that Johnson grew up reading Tove Jansson’s Moomin books (among others). Duw, those little devils get everywhere – even into reference works on Welsh literature!

“In the same way that most of us place more confidence in a cleverly designed wine label than one which looks like somebody’s nephew has thrown it together in Microsoft Paint, a book’s cover really matters.”
– Book 11: Border Country (1960) by Raymond Williams

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MY COPY

I obtained the hardback edition of My Year of Reading Welshly: Discovering Wales in 52 Books from Blackwell’s. Published by Calon, a University of Wales Press non‑fiction imprint in 2025, it runs to 230 pages, including book‑club discussion questions, a bibliography and space to log your reading of Wales‑related books. It is written in English, and the cover was designed by Andy Ward.

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* I’m actually a vegetarian and could never abide shellfish, even in my most gruesome critter-eating days. Just saying!

Categories: Reading Wales

Tags: #Dewithon26, #ReadingWales26, 20th Century Literature, 21st Century Literature, Alex Johnson, Alys Conran, Anglo-Welsh Writing, Bernice Rubens, Cynan Jones, David Jones, Dewithon, Dewithon 2026, Gwyneth Lewis, Hilda Vaughan, Kingsley Amis, Literature of Wales, Manon Steffan Ros, Owen Sheers, Raymond Williams, Reading Wales Month 2026, Ron Berry, Tiffany Murray, Welsh Literature, Welsh Poets