Our Bookshelf
Browse our Bookshelves, selected annually by the Exchange as a window to recent Welsh literary works which we recommend for translation.
“Sarn Helen is a thrilling journey through Wales and through time… This is the finest kind of travel writing: a book that makes you see what is really there, and fills you with the author’s passion to defend it
Horatio Clare
“It is Wales as a manageable imaginative space that Bullough leans into. For if he can show us how Wales is faring in these environmental end times, then we might just be able to scale it up until we arrive at a proper reckoning of the damage inflicted around the world.”
Kathryn Hughes, The Guardian
“A poignant love letter to the endearing beauty of the landscape and history of Wales laced within a starkly painful eulogy for what we are set to lose in the climate and ecological emergency.”
Nation Cymru
“Vital and urgent with concern. You cannot leave this book without its message thundering in your head
Cynan Jones
"A profound and beautiful portrait of Wales. With great charm and learning, Tom Bullough walks us through the country's leafy backways, its deep pasts, the sparkling shards of its identity, its vanishing rural traditions and its fragile ecology."
Phillip Marsden
"Bullough has produced an urgent, logical and lyrical call for climate action, using his deep knowledge of Wales, past and present, as a catalyst. This is a stunning book."
Gwyneth Lewis
Sarn Helen: A Journey Through Wales, Past, Present and Future
Sarn Helen - Helen's Causeway - is the old Roman Road that runs from the south of Wales to the north. As Tom walks the route, sometimes alone, sometimes in company, he describes the changing landscape around him and explores the political, cultural and mythical history of this country that has been so divided, by language and by geography. Running alongside this journey is the story of Tom's engagement with the issue of the climate crisis and its likely impact on the Welsh coastline. From one of Wales' most celebrated writers, Sarn Helen is at once a vivid and immersive portrait of a nation, and a resonant meditation upon the way in which we are shaped by place and in turn shape the places – potentially irrevocably. The book includes illustrations by Jackie Morris.
- Granta (2023)
Aitken Alexander Associates
Reviews
“Sarn Helen is a thrilling journey through Wales and through time… This is the finest kind of travel writing: a book that makes you see what is really there, and fills you with the author’s passion to defend it
Read more reviewsHoratio Clare