There is thus a cool precision about the entry on Edward VIII:

During a tour of the south Wales coalfield in November, 1936, Edward expressed sympathy for the plight of the unemployed; he abdicated less than a month later in order to marry the twice-divorced Wallis Simpson.

But the Encyclopaedia’s main value is as a work of reference, and just about everything you need to know about Wales is here: military defeats are listed, old heroes judiciously assessed and not crowed over, the colonial, then the Nonconformist night, described, from both of which the country is now emerging. It is all here. The most remarkable thing is that this has been made into bedside, and not just library, reading, for it is not all doom and gloom.

Let me leave you with Owain ap Cadwgan, 12th-century Welsh prince, from whom a Norman warlord Gerald de Windsor escaped by sliding down a castle privy. Nothing quite like that occurs in Welsh history, only there is more. ‘Owain then seduced Gerald’s wife . . . .’ Of course they got him in the end. They always did. But see him there for a moment, in the castle above the Teify, before the darkness closes in.

Blackwell Bookshop

Purchase your copy here, 10% off RRP