This Proud and Savage Land

Hywel Mortymer's story begins in 1800 when he is sixteen and a dramatic

change in fortune leads him, innocent and inexperienced, to a brutal and

dangerous life working in the coal mines.

In the mines children can be horribly maimed in devastating gas explosions,

or grow deformed with the burden of their labours and babies are born

underground.

Wales is in turmoil. A tragic divide between rich and poor, the workers powerless,

penniless, starving and diseased sparks growing unrest as the newly founded

Unions move inexorably towards the Chartist Rebellion.

This Proud and Savage Land is a brilliantly detailed chronicle of early nineteenth-

century Wales and a prelude to the bestselling Rape of the Fair Country.

Alexander Cordell was born in Ceylon in 1914, was educated mainly in China and joined the army in 1932. After WWII, during which he served in France, he became a civil servant, spending three years in Hong Kong.

He wrote more than thirty novels including the highly acclaimed 'Mortymer Trilogy' - The Rape of the Fair Country, The Hosts of Rebecca and Song of the Earth. He died on 13 November 1997 aged eighty-three

Hywel Mortymer's story begins in 1800 when he is sixteen and a dramatic change in fortune leads him, innocent and inexperienced, to a brutal anddangerous life working in the coal mines. In the mines children can be horribly maimed in devastating gas explosions,or grow deformed with the burden of their labours and babies are born underground. Wales is in turmoil. A tragic divide between rich and poor, the workers powerless,penniless, starving and diseased sparks growing unrest as the newly founded Unions move inexorably towards the Chartist Rebellion. This Proud and Savage Land is a brilliantly detailed chronicle of early nineteenth-century Wales and a prelude to the bestselling Rape of the Fair Country.

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