Real Swansea

Welcome to the breezily resurgent, ugly, lovely city of Swansea. Once a dynamic port and the metallurgical capital of the world, it was later famous for a vibrant artistic life, which included poets Dylan Thomas and Vernon Watkins, artists Alfred Janes and Ceri Richards and composer Daniel Jones. What does it offer now, in post-industrial Wales? Brought up in Gower and living in Mumbles, poet Nigel Jenkins takes the reader on a tour of the obvious and the oblique, the monumental and the downright quirky. Fusing civic and social history with auto-biographical reminiscence, Jenkins brings to life a place which mixes Dylan heritage with rugby and football passions and a rare fervour for music; the natural beauty of the Bay and Clyne Valley with the dereliction of the Lower Swansea Valley and the charm of Mumbles; the frenzy of Swansea's night-life with the tranquillity of its pioneering parks; the lofty Townhill estate, once in the vanguard of garden city housing, with the swanky postmodernism of the SA1 development at its eastern gateway."