My new novel, The Anarchy, is published next week by Impress Books. It is the final book in the Conquest trilogy, focused on the life of Nest ferch Rhys and the 12th century struggle between the Welsh and the Normans.
In the novel I (anachronistically) use a poem by the Welsh bard Dafydd ap Gwilym:
Yr wylan deg ar lanw, dioer
Unlliw ag eiry neu wenlloer,
Dilwch yw dy degwch di,
Darn fal haul, dyrnfol heli.
O sea-bird, beautiful upon the tides,
White as the moon is when the night abides,
Or snow untouched, whose dustless splendour glows
Bright as a sunbeam and whose white wing throws
A glove of challenge on the salt sea-flood.
You can listen to those lines from the poem in Welsh here.
With thanks and permission from WJEC CBAC Ltd
Translation by Robert Gurney in Bardic Heritage (Chatto & Windus, 1969).
Tracey Warr Writing 