I hear that the University of Wales Press is discretely trying to distance themselves from that recent disaster, the Welsh Academy Encyclopaedia of Wales.

As well they might.

One of my fellow bloggers gave the volume (available in both languages) fulsome praise after he had seen it written about in The Guardian.

Presumably that was because he was so surprised to have seen anything about Wales in The Guardian, or The Independent (although that paper’s very good on dead Welshmen), or The Times (not a patch on Amserau, the back end of the old Baner ac Amserau Cymru), and certainly not The Telegraph.

Clearly that blogger never got around to reading the book (at £65, perhaps no surprise). Or perhaps he had, but his knowledge of Wales was not good enough to allow a comparison.

Let me tell him that the Welsh Academy (which often prefers to use the title Academi, presumably to emphasise its Welshness) is clearly engaged in a dreadful dumbing-down exercise. Continue reading »