{"title":"Dai Smith","description":"\u003cp\u003eExplore the compelling works of Dai Smith, a celebrated Welsh author known for his poignant portrayals of working-class life and industrial heritage. Discover novels that resonate with grit, authenticity, and historical depth.\u003c\/p\u003e","products":[{"product_id":"warrior-s-tale-raymond-williams-biography-book-dai-smith-9781905762569","title":"The Warrior's Tale - Raymond Williams' Biography","description":"A biography of Raymond Williams (1921-1988), using a rich array of material from hitherto unused personal papers. It examines the writer's formative years and beyond, and places its central figure within a deeply researched social and cultural history. -- Cyngor Llyfrau Cymru","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49525952151825,"sku":"GOR004911340","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ WELL_READ \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49658610483473,"sku":"GOR012800524","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1905762569.jpg?v=1772877403"},{"product_id":"off-the-track-book-dai-smith-9781914595127","title":"Off the Track","description":"A boy running around a running track in the early evening opens a memoir of candour and insight. From a working-class Rhondda childhood through to the glamour of Barry Grammar and onto a coveted Balliol College scholarship and study in New York, David Smith was the rising intellectual star of a generation. In this beautifully written memoir Dai Smith engages and entertains. -- Cyngor Llyfrau Cymru","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49550829584657,"sku":"GOR013481149","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":49746277499153,"sku":"NGR9781914595127","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ LIKE_NEW \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49972162560273,"sku":"GOR013144602","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1914595122.jpg?v=1772877592"},{"product_id":"crossing-book-dai-smith-9781912681815","title":"The Crossing","description":"The Crossing bridges the past and the present and connects Wales with America, as it tells of coal owners and coal workers in the age of great transatlantic liners and fortunes to be made. At its heart is a father’s search for his daughter in Welsh valleys no longer proud, where creaming off regeneration grants has replaced coal mining as a way of life and development parks now stand where once did pit head wheels. It follows a lifetime’s search for lost love, the sinking of a great ship in a great war, misplaced family and forlorn hopes where individual lives are shaped and fated in the shadow of modernity and the cold hand of progress. This brave, bold and challenging work conjures a vivid cast of characters into being and offering – with ready vim and ample vigour – their compelling, complex and ultimately telling story.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49562798752017,"sku":"GOR011505613","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1912681811.jpg?v=1772878117"},{"product_id":"what-i-know-i-cannot-say-all-that-lies-beneath-book-dai-smith-9781910901922","title":"What I Know I Cannot Say \/ All That Lies Beneath","description":"In What I Know I Cannot Say \/ All That Lies Beneath, Dai Smith combines a novella and a linked section of short stories to create a dazzling fictional synthesis that takes the reader on a tour of the South Wales Valleys during the twentieth century. Picking up where his 2013 novel Dream On left off, What I Know I Cannot Say follows the life story of Billy's father, Dai Maddox. When Billy's former partner Bran shows up wanting to record Dai's life story to put together a documentary, Dai looks back on his past, remembering his childhood as a destitute orphan, his work as a collier in the mines and the subsequent drifting between menial jobs, alleviated only by reading and drawing; his enrolment in the British Army and participation in the invasion of Italy during the Second World War; and post-war life under socialism, when he was back in the pits and married to Billy's mother, Mona.Moving from the heyday of the pre-mechanised coal industry to the present day, What I Know I Cannot Say presents a moving and vivid panorama of twentieth-century Wales, brought to life by Smith's meticulous attention to historical detail and distinct gift of invoking the smells, sights and sounds of the past.  We find ourselves smelling the cordite of ammunition among the ruins of Cassino in 1943, during the invasion of Italy; the damp coal in the mineshafts; the beer-soaked wood of pub floors; the smell of fresh coffee from a modern percolator. Dai's journey is an emotional and moving one, told in gritty, realistic prose.All That Lies Beneath is white-knuckle fiction ride: power, sex, money and ambition all twist through the pages as Smith creates a feast of intellectual and physical provocation in stories that send a shudder of fearful recognition directly through to the reader.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49571578839313,"sku":"GOR009110520","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ WELL_READ \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49608527511825,"sku":"GOR013622218","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":51320681267473,"sku":"NGR9781910901922","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/191090192X.jpg?v=1751447056"},{"product_id":"library-of-wales-story-the-library-of-wales-short-story-anthology-volume-1-book-parthian-books-9781908946416","title":"Library of Wales: Story - The Library of Wales Short Story Anthology Volume 1","description":"The Library of Wales' Story anthologies feature the very best of Welsh short fiction, written amid the political, social and economic turbulence of twentieth century Wales and beyond. Story I depicts a country torn by capitalism and hypocrisy, yet remaining resilient and creative. -- Cyngor Llyfrau Cymru","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49580825149713,"sku":"GOR007108830","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":49737879355665,"sku":"NGR9781908946416","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1908946415.jpg?v=1772877966"},{"product_id":"in-the-frame-memory-in-society-wales-1910-to-2010-book-dai-smith-9781908069160","title":"In the Frame - Memory in Society, Wales 1910 to 2010","description":"From Rhondda heroes chasing the American dream to rioters staking a claim in their society. In the Frame is a powerful alternative history of twentieth-century South Wales, offered from the personal viewpoint of cultural historian Dai Smith. -- Cyngor Llyfrau Cymru","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49585741234449,"sku":"GOR007386219","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1908069163.jpg?v=1772878034"},{"product_id":"in-the-frame-book-dai-smith-9781906998226","title":"In the Frame","description":"From Rhondda heroes chasing the American dream to rioters staking a claim in their society In the Frame is a powerful alternative history of twentieth-century South Wales, offered from the personal viewpoint of cultural historian Dai Smith.  It takes the reader into a territory - a mythical and veritable Dai Country - formed by the influence of writers and painters, boxers and historians, friends and relatives, rioters and correspondents, critics and photographers. As well as the autobiographical overtones of a Tondypandy childhood and distinguished career, In the Frame contains the far wider undertones of a collective biography. Its mosaic pieces together the consciousness of a society which led its inhabitants in search of fame and fortune as well as the daily struggle for rights and recognition without sympathy or sentimentality. An alternative history of twentieth century Wales by TV presenter and the nation's leading cultural historian Dai Smith.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ LIKE_NEW \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49588942110993,"sku":"GOR010764544","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49603734012177,"sku":"GOR002301730","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":53457887265041,"sku":"GOR006375816","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1906998221.jpg?v=1750867571"},{"product_id":"dream-on-book-dai-smith-9781908946966","title":"Dream On","description":"Dream On is a black comedy, a flashlight noir thriller, a meditation on the lives and stories that connect up the frayed wires in the business of living: of Digger Davies and his one cap for Wales and ultimately untimely death...and the award-winning photographer whose return home will become a quest for his own forgotten identity and compromised life...the thwarted politician in a hospital bed writing his own obituary...and a beautiful girl caught in time, alive in an old man's memory...","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49612917670161,"sku":"GOR005695291","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50877735469329,"sku":"GOR014101565","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1908946962.jpg?v=1772876842"},{"product_id":"raymond-williams-a-warrior-s-tale-book-dai-smith-9781905762996","title":"Raymond Williams  A Warrior's Tale","description":"A biography of Raymond Williams (1921-1988), using a rich array of material from hitherto unused personal papers. It examines the writer's formative years and beyond, and places its central figure within a deeply researched social and cultural history. A hardback version is also available. -- Cyngor Llyfrau Cymru","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49622987374865,"sku":"GOR011712443","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50638615773457,"sku":"GOR002025560","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1905762992.jpg?v=1772877291"},{"product_id":"aneurin-bevan-and-the-world-of-south-wales-book-dai-smith-9780708312162","title":"Aneurin Bevan and the World of South Wales","description":"South Wales was the sight of one of the last expansions of the Industrial Revolution in Britain. From 1880 onwards it competed - in terms of economic and population growth and sheer dynamic modernity - with any comparable area in the world. By the 1920s it was labelled \"American Wales\" and this book treats the culture of South Wales within that global framework. Above all, close attention is paid to the life and times of Aneurin Bevan as its finest exemplar. The chapters that frame the central part on Bevan, present his world through its novelists and its boxers, its heroes and its unsung, its rugby glory and its social strife.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49710984462609,"sku":"GOR002835546","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":53529512509713,"sku":"GOR003641163","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":53534202102033,"sku":"NLS9780708312162","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0708312160.jpg?v=1750944716"},{"product_id":"library-of-wales-story-the-library-of-wales-short-story-anthology-volume-2-book-parthian-books-9781908946430","title":"Library of Wales: Story - The Library of Wales Short Story Anthology Volume 2","description":"The Library of Wales' Story anthologies feature the very best of Welsh short fiction, written amid the political, social and economic turbulence of twentieth century Wales. Story II depicts a country facing up to a changing society and culture where old certainties no longer hold. -- Cyngor Llyfrau Cymru","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":49734745424145,"sku":"NGR9781908946430","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50120109916433,"sku":"GOR008697163","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1908946431.jpg?v=1772877891"},{"product_id":"raymond-williams-a-warrior-s-tale-book-dai-smith-9781913640088","title":"Raymond Williams: A Warrior's Tale","description":"Raymond Williams (1921-1988) was the most influential socialist writer and thinker in post-war Britain. From 1961, with the publication of The Long Revolution, his reputation was bound up with the theory and practice of Culture, as itself a social dynamic. However, Williams always considered that his critical and imaginative work formed an integral whole and that their complementary pattern was crucial to his personal intent and wider purpose. In particular, for him the appearance of the pathbreaking Culture and Society in 1958 and of his revelatory first novel Border Country in 1960 were twinned events. Now, for the first time, making full use of Williams' private and unpublished papers and by placing him in a wide social and cultural landscape, Dai Smith, in this highly original and riveting biographical study, uncovers how the life to 1961 is indeed an explanation of Raymond Williams' immense and connected creative and intellectual achievement.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":49737878896913,"sku":"NGR9781913640088","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":51389203153169,"sku":"GOR011478843","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1913640086.jpg?v=1772877225"},{"product_id":"dream-on-book-dai-smith-9781909844711","title":"Dream On","description":"Dream On is a black comedy, a flashlight noir thriller, a meditation on the lives and stories that connect up the frayed wires in the business of living. -- Cyngor Llyfrau Cymru","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":51118458896657,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":51118459388177,"sku":"GOR008746273","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1909844713.jpg?v=1772877857"},{"product_id":"street-fighting-and-other-past-times-book-dai-smith-9781917140720","title":"Street Fighting and Other Past Times","description":"\"Watch the poetry platforms. Our street fighting bard will be knocking them flat soon.\" - Peter Finch  For readers who are interested in both the pre- and post-devolutionary cultural landscape of Wales, this is a crucial addition to the canon of Welsh writing in English, crowning and celebrating a life filled with enriching work at the coal-face of Welsh culture.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":51219576881425,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":51219577504017,"sku":"NGR9781917140720","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52983717724433,"sku":"NIN9781917140720","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/191714072X.jpg?v=1772877659"},{"product_id":"measuring-the-distance-book-dai-smith-9781917140393","title":"Measuring the Distance","description":"When you come out for the bell aged eighty you have no choice but to employ a late style. This is mine. A mix of deceitfully plain reportage; fictive history and fictional forays into the past; personalised reflections and more shaded perspectives from others; some poetry and polemics; glances of delight at the playfulness of sport and the charisma of personalities; taking a stance, whether orthodox or southpaw, in the courage to live with what you are given no matter what is put in front of you. And the illusion of random repetition, the rat tat tat bam bam, before any change in the angle of attack. But that's enough bobbing out of reach, jabbing and sliding away with pretty dancing around the ring.  One of Wales's most successful interpretive voices of a generation casts  his mind back to the preceding decades to offer a retrospective take on  the legacy of the Labour party in Wales in a genre-defying work written  in Dai's inimitable signature style.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":51485565911313,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":51485565976849,"sku":"NGR9781917140393","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":53122342551825,"sku":"NIN9781917140393","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1917140398.jpg?v=1772876747"},{"product_id":"community-and-its-university-book-dai-smith-9780708317860","title":"A Community and Its University","description":"This work forms part of the tenth-anniversary celebrations of the University of Glamorgan. It traces the institution's development from its beginnings as the South Wales and Monmouthshire School of Mines to its present-day status as a university and sets that history in the context of the university's environment. The opening chapter by Meic Stephens looks at the growth of Pontypridd from a hamlet into an industrial town and describes the cultural and social context leading up to the opening of the School of Mines. This is followed by studies from Peter Harris on the period from 1913-39 and Basil Isaac on the period 1939-92. There are also chapters on adult education (Keith Davies), the social and economic context in which the university now operates (David Adamson), and an epilogue by Adrian Webb which outlines the institution's present role and its future mission.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52690546426129,"sku":"NLS9780708317860","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":52973906493713,"sku":"GOR006284592","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9780708317860.jpg?v=1762337873"},{"product_id":"community-and-its-university-book-dai-smith-9780708317877","title":"A Community and Its University","description":"This work forms part of the tenth-anniversary celebrations of the University of Glamorgan. It traces the institution's development from its beginnings as the South Wales and Monmouthshire School of Mines to its present-day status as a university and sets that history in the context of the university's environment. The opening chapter by Meic Stephens looks at the growth of Pontypridd from a hamlet into an industrial town and describes the cultural and social context leading up to the opening of the School of Mines. This is followed by studies from Peter Harris on the period from 1913-39 and Basil Isaac on the period 1939-92. There are also chapters on adult education (Keith Davies), the social and economic context in which the university now operates (David Adamson), and an epilogue by Adrian Webb which outlines the institution's present role and its future mission.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":53534195253521,"sku":"NLS9780708317877","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9780708317877.jpg?v=1778541992"}],"url":"https:\/\/www.worldofbooks.com\/collections\/author-books-by-dai-smith.oembed","provider":"World of Books ","version":"1.0","type":"link"}