Proud to Be Welsh

What does it actually mean to be Welsh?

Not the postcard version. Not the tourist brochure. The real thing, the feeling that rises in your chest when the anthem starts, the pull you feel toward a place even when you are hundreds of miles from it, the particular warmth of a Welsh kitchen and the particular darkness of Welsh humour and the particular stubbornness of a people who have been told, in every century of their existence, that they are not quite enough, and who have spent every one of those centuries proving otherwise.

Proud to Be Welsh: Echoes of the Ancestors is a book for every person who has ever felt Wales in their bones and struggled to explain it to someone who hasn't. It is for the Welsh person who sings every word of the anthem and has never stopped to think about what those words actually mean. It is for the one who left Wales twenty years ago and still hasn't entirely got over it. It is for the one who never left and sometimes forgets, in the ordinary business of getting through the week, that the place they live in is one of the most extraordinary places on earth.

Across sixteen deeply personal and passionately written chapters, this book explores the full sweep of what Wales is and what it has always been, a country of ancient mountains and living language, of coal dust and choir music, of quiet resilience and fierce cultural pride. It takes you inside the industrial valleys that built a culture from hardship and solidarity. It introduces you to the remarkable Welsh men and women who shaped the world, from Aneurin Bevan and the NHS to Joe Calzaghe in the ring to Mary Jones walking barefoot over the mountains for a Bible. It sits with you in the stadium when the anthem rises. It walks you home through the rain.

This book covers:

• The full story of the Welsh language, one of the oldest living languages in Europe and the extraordinary people who refused to let it die
• The meaning behind every line of Hen Wlad Fy Nhadau, the national anthem, explained with the depth and the love it deserves
• The industrial valleys, the miners, the disasters, the strikes and the culture of extraordinary richness that grew out of all of it
• The women of Wales, whose contributions to Welsh life have been too long overlooked and are here finally given the space they deserve.
• Welsh music from the Male Voice Choirs to the modern Welsh-language scene that is producing some of the most exciting music in Britain.
• The Welsh sporting tradition beyond rugby, boxing champions, Olympic gold medallists, Tour de France winners, world snooker champions.
• The landscape, the mythology, the history, and the feeling of coming home.

Whether you were born in Cardiff or Caernarfon, whether you grew up in the Rhondda or moved to Wales and never quite left your heart there, whether your Welsh grandmother is the reason you are reading this or you simply want to understand what all the fuss is about, this book will give you something you did not have before.

A full, honest, deeply felt account of what Wales is. Where it came from. What it has survived. And why, against every odd and through every difficulty, it endures.

Wales does not need to shout to know who it is. But sometimes it deserves to be heard.