Book Signing - Jon Gower - The Great Book Of Wales

We are delighted to welcome to The Bookshop award winning writer Jon Gower to sign copies of his new book. The Great Book of Wales. A curious traveller’s account of a very special country.

A ticket isn't needed to meet Jon, but we advise that you pre-order your copy of the book to avoid disappointment.

Wales is a compact country that can seem larger than it is. It’s certainly packed with discoveries to be made. The Maerdy Monster, an insect new to science and Gwenllian, a forgotten warrior princess. Europe’s rarest goose and the continent’s busiest energy port. Coal tips turning green and pine martens on patrol.

The Great Book of Wales is a train adventure which really racks up the rail miles, surveying the changing land from train windows and stopping at stations galore. Cilmeri, Borth and Gilfach Fargoed. Hawarden, Manorbier and Dyfi Junction. All change.

As Transport for Wales’ writer-in-residence Jon Gower has travelled a land he loves, finding it even richer than he imagined. From Holyhead to Cardiff’s Pierhead, from the south Wales valleys to the sands of the Dee, it’s a bright quilt of landscapes filled with fascinating people who fully enrich the journey.

Jon Gower is a prize-winning author with over forty books to his name, in Welsh and in English. These include The Story of Wales, which accompanied the landmark BBC TV series and Y Storïwr, which won the Wales Book of the Year. His volume An Island Called Smith, about a disappearing island in Chesapeake Bay was awarded the John Morgan Travel Writing Prize. 

His publications include studies of the radical film-maker Karl Francis and the visual artist John Selway as well as Gwalia Patagonia, being an account of the Welsh settlement in Patagonia, and Wales: At Water’s Edge about the country’s coastal path. Recent titles include his much-lauded book on the Irish Sea as a locus of cultural exchange, The Turning Tide and Birdland, a narrative of change in British birds, both for HarperNorth. 

Jon has also published five novels and five collections of short stories. He was an inaugural Hay Festival International Fellow and has been awarded an Arts Council of Wales Prize, a Creative Wales award and won both The National Eisteddfod Short Story Prize and the Allen Raine Short Story Competition