The Bank Manager and the Holy Grail: Travels to the Weirder Reaches of Wales

by Byron Rogers

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 then 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.

Genres: Travel, Nonfiction

271 pages, Hardcover

First published October 1, 2003

About the author

Byron Rogers is a Welsh journalist, essayist and biographer. In August, 2007 the University of Edinburgh awarded him the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for the best biography published in the previous year, for The Man Who Went Into the West: The Life of RS Thomas. The Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, said of the book: "Byron Rogers's lively and affectionate biography is unexpectedly, even riotously, funny."

Born and raised in Carmarthen, he now lives in Northamptonshire. He has written for Sunday Telegraph and The Guardian, and was once speech writer for the Prince of Wales. It has been written of his essays that he is "a historian of the quirky and forgotten, of people and places other journalists don't even know exist or ignore if they do".

Reviews

[Js100 · Rating 4 out of 5]

This collection of short tales, not fiction, I think ( though I do wonder...) deserves to be better known. I bought it in a charity shop, a serendipitous choice. The title attracted me, like many older readers, I am always on the lookout for something a bit different.

‘Quirky’ and ‘ tongue in cheek’ is hardly adequate to describe these oddities. Many are set around the author’s home town of Carmarthen, but they stretch to Anglesey and other corners of Wales. Gravestones are pointers to remarkable characters, a flying ace in ww1, an inventive carpenter and his diary, an eccentric little known writer’s fan club with famous members. Some are hilarious, a few desperately sad, the tale of the young boxer a warning to every over pushy parent stealing their children’s normal childhood.

Byron’s Welsh nationalism is very visible, sharply so in the little verse on Agincourt.

The last few are valedictory in tone apart from the last, the title story, truly bizarre.

A really enjoyable read, I usually return books to the charity shop, but think this one I’ll keep to reread when I want some light relief from heavier fare and endless bad news.

[Robyn · Rating 3 out of 5]

Gift card | Mixed feelings | Many of the pieces in this collection were interesting, but I didn't really care for the voice of the author, ever-present. The deep cynicism, the lofty sense of superiority, did not endear him to me. It seemed like his whole purpose in writing is to complain or to take the mickey. In one place he specifically says that he traveled to the town in question in order to make fun of it and of the people. Arrogance is a very unpleasant personality trait, and the essays in this collection would have been more enjoyable without his.

[Liz Owen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting book, especially good reading if you're Welsh or on a Welsh holiday. Lots of anecdotes and curious tales about Welsh characters and history. Some parts are quite emotional. There's lovely!

[Julie - Open Books_Open Doors · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved, Loved, Loved!

[Helen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Entertaining collection of articles (some of which you are likely to have come across before if you have ever stumbled upon Byron Rogers in various newspapers and magazines over the years). The usual mix of quirky stories, Welsh history, observations on Welsh social life and customs, and an almost elegiac and nostalgic record of the passing of some of it, such as the language (which makes his curious assertion that mad bureaucracy insists on compulsory Welsh for all jobs strange : this is a myth, but it's one which is very hard to counter. A study of job advertisements will disprove it). There are some real little gems here : the story of the German POWs arrival at, and escape from, the camp at Bridgend; did the Kaiser stay at Llangammarch, and if so has the real cause of the Great War been found?; the disappearance of the Welsh squirearchy; and, the one which particularly intrigues me, the throwaway reference to the eccentric Welsh flying ace Ira Jones having stolen a steam engine in Cardiff and set off up the line in it during the Second World War. I would love to know if this is true, having grown up with the story of just such an incident in Cardiff, but with no hint of the name of the culprit. There can't have been two, surely?
There's a lovely combination of the lyrical and the laugh-out-loud funny here.These articles mainly appeared in weekend supplements and were intended as light reading with a bit of an edge. Nice to have them collected like this, as so much journalism disappears from view over time.