'A magnificently conceived work.' - The Guardian

Dannie Abse's rich mixture of Welsh and Jewish backgrounds, and his dual occupations of doctor and author, have led to what is widely regarded as one of the most readable, humorous and poignant autobiographies available today. Goodbye, Twentieth Century incorporates his acclaimed first volume of autobiography, A Poet in the Family, and in this new edition from the Library of Wales brings his life up to the present day and the outset of a new century. It includes a moving epilogue that speaks of his recent years which brought tragedy and dramatic change to his life.

“Incident and character are vividly depicted, period is richly evoked and the descriptive passages remind one what a splendid poet the author is.” - The Observer

“An entertaining and at times moving book. Mr Abse relates some very amusing anecdotes, and his informal yet controlled style is capable of moving without any sense of dislocation from these lighter occasions to deeply serious and affecting passages.” - Times Literary Supplement

It's the 1920s. Airships, Prohibition, Al Capone, talkies, gramophones, the Empire State building: the world across the pond is bursting with excitement and the future is wide open for two small boys at home on their North Wales farm. Eagerly they follow the progress of their father, famous Welsh tenor Jabez Trevor, as he tours North America with the Welsh Imperial Singers.

"The fiction establishes him as the supreme chronicler of (post-war) South Wales valley life, and his fascinating account of his upbringing in English-speaking Pontypridd raises questions about the complex plurality of modern Wales which still command serious attention." The New Companion to the Literature of Wales

At the heart of Dai Country - the central valleys of twentieth-century South Wales from the 1930s to the 1970s - was the metropolis of Pontypridd.

My great grandfather and grandfather sailed the Horn, in steam and diesel, out of Liverpool. I was the first generation not to sail the Horn or fight a war. Instead, I would go to the end of the world, beyond Patagonia, to Tierra del Fuego. I would do more, I would see the Horn and find lost tribes. The child in me could go even further and sail the waters of Coleridge's albatross and enter the watercolours' blue horizons of my first novel, and sit on Robinson Crusoe's imaginary shore. I had imagined these places; they must exist. All I had to do was look for them.

George Evans had been working underground as a miner for three years when he volunteered for the British Army in 1944. He was eighteen years old. The train from Banwen across the mountains to the Brecon barracks was the first stage of a remarkable journey that would take him across the world and propel him into one of the last major campaigns of World War II. Where the Flying Fishes Play is a record of that time in a young man's life when the world holds endless possibilities.