Main content

Jon Gower, writer and keen walker of the Welsh mountains, explores unique features of each of Wales's five ranges, reflecting on what they mean to the people who live among them.

Jon Gower, writer and keen walker of the Welsh mountains, explores the unique characteristics of each of Wales's five ranges and reflects on what they mean to the people who live among them.

For many people, Wales is synonymous with its mountains. They occupy a unique place in the country's ancient mythology, its history and its culture, defining who rules the country, who lives in it, and how they survive. But each of the mountain ranges of Wales has its own unique character. In this series of The Essay, Jon Gower paints a detailed portrait of the landscape of these higher places, and in doing so, explores how they鈥檝e shaped the country's psyche.

In his essay on Epynt, Jon reflects on a landscape that offers meagre grazing for animals, dotted with small ponds and peat bogs, and which remains haunted by the eviction of many inhabitants by the War Office in 1939. Given over to military training, the scything of wind through the tough grasses is for most of the year punctuated by the sound of mortar fire, anti-tank weaponry and machine guns.

Producer: Megan Jones for 大象传媒 Cymru Wales

Available now

14 minutes

Broadcast

  • Thu 19 Mar 2020 22:45

Death in Trieste

Death in Trieste

A 1760s murder still informs ideas about aesthetics, a certain sort of sex, and death.

Watch: My Deaf World

Watch: My Deaf World

Five compelling experiences of what it is like to be deaf in 21st-century Britain.

The Book that Changed Me

Five figures from the arts and science introduce books that changed their lives and work.

Download The Essay

Download The Essay

Download all the episodes from the series and listen at your leisure.

Podcast