Browse our Bookshelves, selected annually by the Exchange as a window to recent Welsh literary works which we recommend for translation.
“Full of pop gossip that'll leave you starry-eyed, and written with a warmth and precision you'll want to savour for as long as you can . . . I didn't want it to end.”
Seamas O’Reilly
Sunday Times and Daily Mail Book of the Week
A funny, touching, fascinating memoir of a rural Welsh childhood surrounded by rock stars.
It's the late 1970s and Tiff lives with her mum, Joan, at Rockfield, the iconic recording studios. This place of legend, where some of the most famous rock albums of all time were recorded, is the background to a freewheeling, ever-changing whirlwind of a childhood. Tiff's days are spent running around the farm, making friends with local wildlife and helping out with the endless array of dishes her mum creates to keep the bands fed. She's looking for a dog, she's looking for a father; but the one constant throughout is her and Joan, building an unconventional family in the most unlikely of locations.
My Family and Other Rock Stars is Tiff's remarkable, truly unique story of growing up in a rural idyll, of Cordon Bleu cookery and of a childhood where the chances of bumping into Freddie Mercury playing piano, or a group of Hell's Angels turning up to record for Lemmy, or even the hope of David Bowie appearing, were as normal as hopscotch and homework.
Fleet (2024) | 978-0349727530
400pp
Cathryn Summerhayes, Curtis Brown: SummerhayesOffice@curtisbrown.co.uk
“Full of pop gossip that'll leave you starry-eyed, and written with a warmth and precision you'll want to savour for as long as you can . . . I didn't want it to end.”
Seamas O’Reilly