REVIEWS 209

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Owen Donovan reviews | Leading the Dragon | John Osmond (ed)

If there’s one company held up as a model for co-operative enter-prise, it’s the Mondragon Corpo-ration – a federation of 120 co-ops, with an annual turnover of €14billion. A 1981 pilgrimage to the Basque Country by the Wales TUC led to the establishment of the Wales Co-operative Centre. Leading the Dragon, published by the Institute of Welsh Affairs, is a concise account of a return visit by a Welsh delegation in April 2012. Six chapters by John Osmond, Ashley Drake, Alex Bird, Derek Walker, Mark Drakeford and Liz Moyle explore the history, practices, business model and culture of Mondragon, as well as possible applications here in Wales…

T. Robin Chapman reviews | Ras Olaf Harri Selwyn | Tony Bianchi

After Esgyrn Bach (2006), I had him down as a post-devolution satirist in the mould of Dafydd Meirion’s Pî-Ar, Goronwy Jones’s Walia Wigli, Robat Gruffudd’s Carnifal, Robin Llywelyn’s Un Diwrnod yn yr Eisteddfod and Delyth George’s Gwe o Gelwyddau. After Pryfeta (2007), I read him through the jumble of hauntings, suppressed memories, dreams, hallucinations, rumours, mistaken assumptions, wild goose chases, forgeries and interrupted trains of thought that inform Angharad Price’s Tania’r Tacsi, Annes Glyn’s  Dilyn ‘Sgwarnog, Martin Huws’s Dim Niwed and Mari Emlyn’s Cam wrth Gam. With Chwilio am Sebastian Pierce (2009), I was forced to think again.  He was a novelist of cruelty…

M. Wynn Thomas reviews| Murmur | Menna Elfyn

During the 19th-century plains wars in the US, the one great fear of the Native Americans was damp weather.  Damp slackened the bow-strings, robbing them of their lethal tautness. Menna Elfyn’s sen-sibility has always struck me as highly-strung. That is exactly what makes her such an exhilaratingly dangerous poet.  And a poet well adapted for the challenges of our hyper-perilous age.

Over her remarkable career of thirty-five years she has developed not only into a globally travelled writer but into a globally challenged one, who feels personally affronted by injustice whatever form it may locally take and wherever it may occur…

Phil Bethell reviews | Proud to be a Swan | Geraint H. Jenkins

Having been involved in a project celebrating the centenary of the Swans, I looked for-ward with some trepidation to seeing Geraint Jenkins’ ‘rival’ publication.  The Swans100 project, a joint project between the University and the Swansea City Supp-orters Trust, has already published a book of fans’ stories and memories of supporting the club. Proud to be a Swan is thankfully a different beast, and adds another dimension to the centenary celebrations.

Compressing the 100 years of the football club’s history into 186 pages is quite a challenge, but Jenkins manages to cover the full century. The ups and downs, the triumphs (few), the brushes with disaster (too many), the famous players, the managers, the quaintness of the old stadium – this is all described chronologically…

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