Real Wrexham

Mixing personal experience and memory with history, topography, journalism, and an unflagging interest, this guidebook lifts the stone over the Welsh town of Wrexham and finds something rather special. The major center in northeast Wales, this workaday town straddles several linesthe border between Wales and England, the fault line of Welsh and English languages, the shift from heavy industry to post-industrial society, Anglicanism and dissent. It rests in two shadowsupmarket Chester and metropolitan Liverpoolyet to the west lies farming and heritage in the rural vale of Clwyd. This study highlights the features for which Wrexham is famous, and which are just as diverse as the town itselfWrexham lager, a giant-killing football club, St. Giles' church (one of the Seven Wonders of Wales), Elihu Yale, and many others. The history uncovered here, both civic and personal, is a revelation.

Grahame Davies is a poet, critic, and novelist in the Welsh language. A former newspaper journalist, he now works for BBC Wales. He was the winner of the Wales Arts Council's 2002 Book of the Year Award with the volume Cadwyni Rhyddid. He is also the author of Everything Must Change and The Chosen People: Wales and the Jews and the coauthor of The Big Book of Cardiff.