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Mike Parker reviews
In Pursuit of St. David
by Gerald Morgan and
Tryweryn
by Owain Williams

Every nation needs its heroes, though how they choose to mark them varies wildly. As a rule of thumb, the chippier the nation, the bigger the stories and the beefier the statues. On that scale, Wales sits fairly comfortably, secure in its stories without recourse to too much hyperbole.

Gerald Morgan’s useful new primer is excellent in stitching together some of the fragmentary information that has survived about Dewi Sant, much of it culled from highly loaded later sources. Morgan is especially good at placing David in the context of his geographical influence, exploring sites in Ireland, Brittany and England as well as Wales, and placing David’s story in the wider European panoply of the saints.

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