Bryn Glas Blog

Gillian Paschkes-Bell, editor of Pantolwen Press, ventures down some less well-trodden paths reflecting on life and books.

She is not posting at present whilst working on her own novel. 

Fantasy Fiction and Reality

Guest post by author, A G Rivett. Fantasy, Sci fi and Speculative Fiction In a recent piece in The Author, the journal of the Society of Authors, Nadia Attia made good points about the importance…
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What Kind of Experimental Fiction is VU?

What kind of experimental fiction is Kenneth Sinclair’s debut novel Vu? Is it, indeed, a novel – or a new form entirely? Reviewing for the Historical Novel Society, Susie Helme exclaims: “I’ve never seen a…
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Looking across the quad to Darlington's Great Hall

How to use history

The Historical Novel Society chose a venue steeped in over a thousand years of history for its 2024 conference, held at the Dartington Estate in Devon. We met and mingled in medieval buildings where once…
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Film poster

This Being Human – Panʼs Labyrinth

What is it about Spanish culture that enables their film-makers to create such masterly evocations of other-worldly states? We recently watched Panʼs Labyrinth (El laborinto del fauno), the award-winning 2006 film by Guillermo del Toro that opens…
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Journey to St Ives

Truth and Priorities: The Serpentine Cave

The quest for truth is central to Jill Paton Walshʼs 1997 novel, The Serpentine Cave. It is explored in different ways, on different levels. Honesty in business dealings… The gradual realisation that a person is…
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Cave explorer looking at flowstone formations by Cheile Cutler, curated by Adrian Mag on Unsplash

Initiation Rites – The Womb of the Mountain

Several readers of The Priestʼs Wife have commented on the passage in which Morag, the protagonist, descends to a cave deep in a mountain and there spends three days and nights in darkness. The Priestʼs Wife is…
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Photo by Jonny Gios on Unsplash

Sycamore Gap

This Easter, we heard Newcastleʼs Bishop Helen-Ann give the Good Friday meditation on BBC Radio 4: reflections arising from the felling of the tree at the Sycamore Gap which, for three hundred years, grew beside…
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Epona is always seen with horses

World’s End

A late summerʼs evening. The doors thrown wide, light and warmth attracting some members of the local insect population to join us. A full auditorium, listening to the broadcaster and storyteller, Euros Lewis, taking us…
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New light kindled in the dark of the tree

A Sense of Otherness

This January, the Bryn Glas Blog has a guest post from A G Rivett, who writes about the sense of Otherness that is an essential part of being human. How that is conveyed – or not…
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First edition cover

An Unknown Woman

This post is the second of my series about women who, against the odds, arrive at some form of emancipation. (My first post on this theme was: The Godmother—Can You be Too Honest?) I like…
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Jacket design

Things Fall Apart

  “Read this,” said a friend. “Itʼs different.” For the first time I was to be transported to the world of an African village by a writer whose words felt authentic. Chinua Achebeʼs 1958 novel,…
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Earth, Air, Fire and Water on Penbryn Beach

An Elemental Reading of The Seaborne

I spent the first weekend of July in Lampeter, at a gathering focused on Yoga, Ayurveda and the Cultivation of Harmony put on by the Harmony Institute of the University of Wales Trinity Saint David.…
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Editor and Author at the Logie Steading Bookshop

The Seaborne by A G Rivett – the inside story

Listening to the BBC Radio 4 version of Haydn Middleton’s novella, The Ballad of Syd and Morgan (by Roger James Elsgood, broadcast on May 20th 2023), I heard Morgan (E M Forster) explain to his…
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Old Street Publishing 2019 edition

The Godmother – Can you be too honest?

With The Godmother, I begin a short series of occasional blog posts on novels about women who, against the odds, arrive at some form of emancipation. What form that takes depends, not only on the…
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Eric, taken by himself

RIP dear Eric

It was on the first anniversary of the start of the present Ukraine war, a day when Jupiter and Venus – Joy and Love – were conjunct, that a small gathering of family and friends…
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Stock photo on Unsplash
Stock photo on Unsplash

Where’s Frodo?

This month, it will be a year since the war on Ukraine began. I mark this by going back to an essay written by a Russian and published in The Guardian on 27 February 2022.…
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Glastonbury tor - drone picture on Unsplash

“Godʼs back!”

“Godʼs back!” I quote Tim Freke, sharing the current cutting edge of his philosophy at a wonderful New Year retreat Andrew and I have just attended where he lives in Glastonbury. (Andrew is my husband.…
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Stock photo

Heading for the Light

I was once told that spiritual traditions tend to place too much emphasis on Light, since Darkness is just as important in getting any creative process going – as anyone who has ever planted a…
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Programme notes cover

Operation Julie – How to Change Your Mind

We went to see Operation Julie, the new rock musical from Theatr Na nÓg that premiered in the Aberystwyth Arts Centre, toured to Brecon, and then to the Lyric at Carmarthen, which is where we…
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James Fox looks at an Egyptian figurine

Nature and Us

In this first post of the Bryn Glas Blog I want to begin with the big picture and describe how I feel about our present global situation. And Iʼd like to begin as I intend…
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