Morgan Llwyd (1619-1659), the nephew of a professional soldier and magician, was a Roundhead, a millenialist, a chaplain in the army of Oliver Cromwell, and later a civil servant of the commonwealth in Wales.
His famous religious allegory, A Book of Three Birds, is considered the most important Welsh book of the Seventeenth Century, and an enduring masterpiece of Welsh prose. With its introduction reflecting on the political turmoils of our time, this new translation by Rob Mimpriss brings to life the pungency of Morgan Llwyd's writing, the richness of his religious and political thought, and the urgency of his drama and characterisation.
'Lucid, skilful, and above all, of enormous timely relevance.' Jim Perrin
About the Author:
Morgan Llwyd was born in Maentwrog in 1619 and educated in Wrexham, where he experienced a religious awakening in 1635 under the preaching of the Puritan, Walter Cradock. He joined Walter Cromwell's army during the Civil War as a chaplain. In 1644 he returned to Wales as a preacher, and in 1650 was commissioned by Parliament as an Assessor of new ministers under the Act for the Propagation of the Gospel in Wales. He died in Wrexham in 1659.
Rob Mimpriss is the author of three short-story collections, Reasoning, For His Warriors and Prayer at the End, and the translator of Going South: The Stories of Richard Hughes Williams. His recent short fiction has been translated into Arabic by Hala Salah Eldin for an anthology of fiction published by Albawtaka, Cairo, and has been short-listed for the Rhys Davies Prize. He has published criticism and reviews of Raymond Carver, Richard Ford, Robert Olmstead and others for New Writing, New Welsh Review and elsewhere. In 2011 he was elected to Membership of the Welsh Academy, in recognition of his contributions to Welsh writing. He lives at http: //www.robmimpriss.com and in Bangor.
