Collected Writings

The work begins with two recently discovered unpublished short stories, set in the remote times of George II, by his late historian father Francis Jones. This volume is dedicated to his memory. From that distant period, we move on to the Weepers of the Middle Ages, the Palace of Versailles, the East German Uprising of 1953, the Nympho in the blue Cadillac and after all that, to his beloved Wales with Incident in Cardiff Park and The Day of the Quail, on to the rushing waters of the mighty river Rhone, where almost inevitably lurk the Hounds of Annwn, Hell's Gate Guardians of Wales. Drama is served in the updated fragments of a play Tom Thumb by the great Henry Fielding. This is a rude burlesque on a corrupt monarchy and its venal PM and MP's. It provoked the official censorship of the scripts for the theatre in 1738, and shamefully, this ban lasted until 1968. The author's 'juvenilia' consist of poems composed in his youth - a short chronicle of Welsh Remembrance of Things Past. Dedwydd Jones's little excursions abound with odd characters - the loony baker, the innumerate civil servant, the fickle Vlasta, A Bucket of Warm Water for a Scrubber, a disgraceful Prime Minister and a retired hermit! Never a dull moment.