Last Saturday I took part in a day organised by the Welsh Academy, Yr Academi Gymreig. It was the first of a series of three days organised by the Academy, which is the Welsh National Literature Promotion Agency and Society for Authors. They chose Pandy because of its most famous son Raymond Williams (1921-1988) who attended the local primary school and King Henry VIII Grammar School for Boys in Abergavenny. He won a scholarship to Trinity College, Cambridge. He went on to teach at Oxford and Cambridge Universities and became Professor of Drama at Cambridge. He wrote many books, selling over 750,000 copies of them in the UK alone, and established a world-wide reputation as an academic, novelist and critic.

The day began with a lecture by Professor Dai Smith who has recently published a new biography of Raymond Williams called ‘A Warrior’s Tale’. Appropriately the talk was given in the Drama Centre which had been the Boys’ Grammar School that Williams attended. The tour concentrated on Pandy, which Williams had described in his autobiographical novel, ‘Border Country’, taking in his birthplace. There Dr John Pikoulis read extracts from Williams’ work and considered the village’s lovely setting between the Skirrid and Black Mountains. The 50 people on the tour were then taken through the village and told about the houses, school, village hall, church and chapels which would have been part of the writer’s childhood. John Pikoulis then took the group to the site of the old Pandy railway station, where Raymond’s father worked as a signalman, and then over the fields to where the Honddu River joins the Monnow at Allt yr Ynys on the Welsh border. After lunch at this beautiful 16th century manor house, once the home of the Cecils and now a four-star country hotel, the tour ended with a visit to Williams’s grave in Clodock churchyard and to Clodock church followed by tea at Allt yr Ynys.

It was a thoroughly enjoyable day. The next tour is to the poet Alun Lewis’ Cwmamman on Saturday August 16 when the lecture will be given by Dr John Pikoulis. The third tour is to Llangarron on Saturday September 6 to consider the life and work of Margiad Evans. There the lecturer will be Dr Ceridwen Lloyd Morgan. The series is designed to introduce readers to the landscapes which inspired these Welsh writers. For more information or to book your place contact the Academy on 029 2047 2266.