The Writers of Wales Database

ROGERS, BYRON

Care of Aurum, 7 Greenland St, London NW1 0ND
Tel: 0207 284 7160.
Website: www.aurumpress.co.uk.

Brought up in Welsh–speaking Carmarthenshire, he has contrived to make a living from the English language, writing for most of the ‘quality’ nationals including The Sunday Telegraph, Guardian, and, improbably, as speech–writer for the Prince of Wales. In 2000, making the discovery that it was possible to write, as well as read, books, he has in the last seven years published seven, all of which, with the exception of the Gregynog Lost Children, have since appeared in paperback. Byron lives in Carmarthen and Northamptonshire, has succeeded in marrying an Englishwoman, and owns a car. He is about to start work on his autobiography, even though his role model to date has been the novelist J. L.Carr who, when asked by his American publisher to supply autobiographical details for a dust jacket, wrote, " J.L.Carr lives in England".

Both The Last Human Cannonball (Aurum, 2004) and The Last Englishman, the Life of J.L.Carr (Aurum, 2003) have been Radio 4 Books of the Week. The Man Who Went into the West: The Life of R.S Thomas (Aurum Press, 2006), won Saga Magazine Non Fiction Book of the Year and the James Tate Black Memorial Prize. It was also a Christmas Book of the Year in the Observer, Express, Spectator, Mail on Sunday, Prospect magazine and the Sunday Herald, as well as being on the Wales Book of the Year 2007 Long List. Byron has recently published his autobiography, followed by a part reminiscence, part gazeteer.

Reviews:
With respect to An Audience with an Elephant (Aurum, 2001):

"…A wonderful writer, droll, poignant and dreamy…"
New Statesman

"…will become a classic…"
Western Mail

With respect to The Green Lane to Nowhere : the Life of an English Village (Aurum, 2002):

"…delightfully poignant.."
The Field

With respect to The Bank Manager and the Holy Grail, travels to the wilder reaches of Wales (Aurum, 2003):

" …His is a rare talent. Celebrate it…"
Nicolas Lezard, Guardian

"…Completely mad and very charming…"
Jeremy Paxman, Observer

With respect to The Last Human Cannonball (Aurum, 2004):

"…One of the quiet maestros of the English language…"
Lloyd Evans, Spectator

With respect to The Last Englishman, the Life of J.L.Carr (Aurum, 2003):

"…A miniature masterpiece of social history…"
Simon Jenkins, The Times

With respect to The Man Who Went Into the West, the Life of R.S.Thomas (Aurum, 2006):

"...A biography touched by genius..."
Craig Brown, Mail on Sunday

"...A masterpiece..."
Roger Lewis, Daily Express

"...Brilliant…deserves every literary gong going..."
Val Hennessy, Daily Mail

"...Byron Rogers’s lively and affectionate biography is unexpectedly, even riotously, funny…warm, perceptive, ruthless, gossipy and admiring..."
The Archbishop of Canterbury, Sunday Times

"...That rare thing, a literary biography that is so well written, and whose subject is so eccentric, that it doesn’t require a knowledge of the subject, or even of poetry in general, to be enjoyed..."
Sean O’Hagan, Observer

"...This book ought to win every award foe which it is eligible, including- amazingly given the subject – such as are available for humorous writing..."
Andrew Martin, Sunday Telegraph


Selected Publications:
Essays
An Audience with an Elephant (Aurum, 2001)
The Green Lane to Nowhere : the Life of an English Village (Aurum, 2002)
The Bank Manager and the Holy Grail, travels to the wilder reaches of Wales (Aurum, 2003)
The Last Human Cannonball (Aurum, 2004)

Biography
The Last Englishman, the Life of J.L.Carr (Aurum, 2003)
The Man Who Went Into the West, the Life of R.S.Thomas (Aurum, 2006)
Me: The Authorised Biography (Aurum, 2009)
Three Journeys (Gomer, 2011)

History
The Lost Children (Gregynog, 2005)



The Bank Manager and the Holy Grail, travels to the wilder reaches of Wales (Aurum, 2003)

Here is the story of Kaiser Wilhelm’s holiday in a small Welsh spa town shortly before the outbreak of the Great War, and of the Welsh waxwork museum largely peopled by countless effigies of Prince Philip discarded by Madame Tussaud’s. There is the true story of how a project to ensure the survival of the Welsh language came to involve the translation of pornographic novels, and the equally true story of how Kurt Cobain came to meet Courtney Love - in the one nightclub in Newport, South Wales. And there is the utterly baffling tale of how the Holy Grail temporarily came to be in the safe keeping of the manager of Lloyds Bank in Aberystwyth.

To purchase this title from gwales.com, please click on its front cover



The Last Human Cannonball (Aurum, 2004)

Byron Rogers’ latest collection of travel pieces searches for, and finds, a remarkable array of quirky, whimsical and singular individuals. But as well as such characters as the pensioner on a Saga holiday who decided to swim across the Amazon, this book sees for the first time Rogers meeting a number of undeniably famous people: Hollywood stars, legends of children’s radio serials he had idolised in childhood - even rock stars like Mick Jagger. However, as one might expect, Rogers’ encounters with celebrity have their own unexpected outcomes. Burt Lancaster rants to him about transsexuality whilst Rita Hayworth is most worried about her neighbour’s TV aerial.

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The Man Who Went Into the West, the Life of R.S.Thomas (Aurum, 2006)

A hilarious and extraordinary story of a singular man. Rogers describes the life of one of 20th-century English literature’s greatest poets: R.S. Thomas. Thomas had a reputation for being an austere, unforgiving, taciturn, wintry man. However, Rogers has unearthed the comic, absurd and touching story of this man’s personal life and household. Here is a man who banned Hoovers from his house on grounds of noise, whose first act on moving into an ancient cottage was to rip out the central heating, whose attempts to seek out more authentically Welsh parishes only brought him more into contact with loud English holidaymakers. This is a surprising, sometimes shocking, but at last humanising portrait of someone who wrote truly metaphysical poetry.

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Me: The Authorised Biography (Aurum, 2009)

Byron tackles, in his own idiosyncratic and compulsively readable way, a third biographical subject: himself. Several years ago he started receiving letters forwarded to him by his then-employer, the Daily Telegraph Magazine. But these weren't the usual readers' letters. These were passionate, not to say, steamy, love letters. They were also from women he'd never met. But they seemed to know all about him, the illustrious journalist...Rogers' quest to find out about this other Mr Rogers - not your normal kind of imposter, but one who did you the double-edged favour of spreading far and wide your undeserved reputation for unbridled priapism - is what sets off this strange and hilarious memoir. For, having written two acclaimed biographies of singular, indeed maverick, literary figures - J.L.. Carr and R.S. Thomas - there remained only one eligible subject for the completion of the trilogy: B.D. Rogers...

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