by Molly Owen | Jan 29, 2012 | Blog, Lily Dewaruile
I first began writing romantic fiction about Wales after my first visit. I little understood the country or the culture – definitely not the language – but I was inspired by the astonishing fact that, in a country which is so little known outside its borders, a vibrant culture in a Celtic language that has been thriving for many, many centuries and all in a very modern country. This is not a tribal community untouched by modern technology. This is a 21st Century land that has held onto its culture and language with so much success and yet, few people know that Wales exists.
I fell in love with the language and that led to falling in love with the people and their culture. I don’t write factually based historical fiction. I think the best way to describe my novels about 9th and 10th Century Wales is Cultural Romances – love stories based on cultural and social circumstances upon which I can build a fictional existence for my characters.
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by Molly Owen | Dec 29, 2011 | Blog, Lily Dewaruile
While researching for my family saga, Pendyffryn, I read several interpretations of The Mabingoi – including Gwyn Jones and Elizabeth Walton.
1000 year old Yew Tunnel at Aberglasney
My 1955 copy of Welsh Legend and Folk-Tales is tattered and spent but gave me a fresh look at one story I thought I knew until I read the source legend. I included this story in my contribution to Celtic Queens, Donna Goode and Lisa Campbell’s blog in June 2010.
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by Molly Owen | Nov 29, 2011 | Blog, Lily Dewaruile
In 1822, on the Gower Peninsula, Daniel and John Davies, two of many 19thC Victorian archaeologists, discovered the bones of strange animals and a mammoth’s tusk in Goat’s Hole Cave. The following year, William Buckland (Professor of Geology at Oxford and Dean of Westminster Abbey) discovered the skeletal remains of a human who became the subject of nearly two centuries of speculation.
Buckland first suggested the remains were those of a customs official, murdered by smugglers. Before he published his findings, he changed his mind and presented a woman of ill-repute, the Red Lady of Paviland. These remains have since been radiocarbon dated and DNA evidence has clarified much of the mystery but, for well over a century, the Red Lady of Paviland held an exulted position: the first human fossil to have been found anywhere in the world.
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I first began writing romantic fiction about Wales after my first visit. I little understood the country or the culture – definitely not the language – but I was inspired by the astonishing fact that, in a country which is so little known outside its borders, a vibrant culture in a Celtic language that has been thriving for many, many centuries and all in a very modern country. This is not a tribal community untouched by modern technology. This is a 21st Century land that has held onto its culture and language with so much success and yet, few people know that Wales exists.
