FOR more than forty years, Ken Edwards has been both a player and the unofficial historian of Pembroke Dock Bowling Club. Few people are better placed to tell the club’s story — and its important role in Welsh bowling — than the man who has spent decades preserving its past.

This year, to mark the club’s centenary, Ken has written and published a comprehensive new history of the club.

Pembroke Dock Bowling Club was founded in 1925 at the newly opened Memorial Park on Bush Street, created in honour of the town’s servicemen who died in the First World War. The first woods were rolled on the new green that summer, beginning a tradition that continues to flourish a century later.

Ken was introduced to the sport by his late father, Syd Edwards — himself a former club president — in the early 1980s. Since then, he has assembled an extensive archive of photographs, documents and memorabilia charting the club’s activity, achievements and personalities. His research into the early years has added further depth, uncovering rare images and records that might otherwise have been lost.

The result is One Hundred Years, a beautifully produced 132-page book featuring almost 250 photographs spanning a century of bowling in Pembroke Dock. Many familiar faces appear throughout, including Ken’s wife Cynthia, a long-standing member of the club.

The book is available for £10 from the author on 01646 672501 or by emailing [email protected], and can also be purchased from the Bowling Club at Memorial Park. Printing was carried out locally by Monddi, Pembroke Dock.

A HAUNTING novel inspired by the largely unknown history of Welsh witchcraft has been published by an Aberystwyth University lecturer.

Set in sixteenth century Wales, amid the relentless rain and failing crops, a midwife is accused of witchcraft and her neighbours turn against her.

Through the eyes of a naïve gentry woman, associate lecturer Mari Ellis Dunning weaves a dark tale of suspicion and fear.

Her magical novel rooted in tradition and realism, tells a story rich with bold feminism that will captivate readers of “witcherature” fiction.

Author of the new novel and associate lecture at the Department of English and Creative Writing at Aberystwyth University, Mari Ellis Dunning, said:

“The stories of the women involved in early modern witch trials feel more relevant than ever at the moment, given the state of female reproductive rights and bodily autonomy across the globe.”

“The book has drawn on my research of early modern Wales – a country which was unique in its outlook on witchcraft. Distinct elements of Welsh culture, including superstition and religion, halted the witch trials seen across the rest of Britain and Europe.

“In fact, the witch is steeped in Welsh culture. There is speculation among some researchers that the traditional tall, black hat of the Welsh woman served as inspiration for the wide-brimmed hat of the fairy tale witch. Yet Wales saw no witch hunt. I hope the book is not only a thought-provoking read, but also gives people insight into some of our history as well.”

Mari Ellis Dunning’s debut poetry collection, ‘Salacia’, was shortlisted for Wales Book of the Year. Her second collection, ‘Pearl and Bone’, was chosen as Wales Arts Review’s Number 1 Poetry Choice of 2022. She has just begun teaching a new ‘Writing Women’ module at the University.

Her new book will be launched at 5:30pm on Friday 31 October in the National Library of Wales

A must-read by a man who dedicated his career to fighting crime in West Wales.

WHEN crime fiction is written by someone who spent three decades in both uniform and plain clothes, it lands differently. Jon H. Davies — a Dyfed-Powys officer who spent his last eight years policing in Pembrokeshire — brings that authority to his debut novel The Slippery Path. It’s there in the clipped dialogue, the procedural confidence and the unvarnished portrait of West Wales crime.

Davies is no stranger to notorious cases. Known as a tough, no-nonsense custody sergeant — the officer who booked in John Cooper, the “Bullseye Killer” — he writes with the steadiness of someone who has lived the charge room and the incident log.

The novel opens in Neath with a brutal set-piece. Jeweller Michael Moore, a proud creature of routine, is wrapping up for the day when a hooded thug erupts into violence. There’s no heist-movie gloss here; the attack is messy, frightening, extremely emotional and deeply believable — a statement of intent for what follows.

From there the canvas widens. We meet Detective Sergeant David Winters, a once charismatic copper, stuck in a world of paper pushing who is suddenly rejuvenated when a suspect for the case comes to light. The reader is taken from the back streets of West Wales to Liverpool’s darker corners, knitting together a present-day investigation with sickening, violent cold cases that refuse to stay buried.

Running beside the police thread is a Cadet with a past he’s desperate to keep hidden. His inner fight — whether to hold his line in uniform or slide back into old patterns — gives the book its title: the “slippery path” runs under badge and balaclava alike.

The underworld cast is sharply drawn. Taff Robbo is a frustrated and saddened, super-tough former SAS soldier, a man trained for violence who cannot quite leave it behind. Rose Price carries her own notoriety, while the unnamed thug of the opener embodies the impulsive brutality Davies saw too often on wet pavements and in custody suites.

Place matters. Davies doesn’t plaster names across every street, but locals will recognise a thinly disguised Pembroke Dock in the clock tower at St John’s Church and the old Sunderland seaplane hangars in the dockyard — landmarks that anchor a town scarred by decline. This isn’t brochure Pembrokeshire; it’s rain-slicked, functional and real, and it shapes the choices of those who live there.

Stylistically the book is relentless. Sentences push forward with the urgency of a foot chase; dialogue is raw and often cruel; violence is described frankly. That will divide readers, but it’s what gives the novel its charge. Davies isn’t offering cosy puzzles; he’s showing the world he worked in.

What elevates The Slippery Path is the insider’s perspective. Davies writes with clear sight about the corrosive effects of heroin and cocaine in West Wales, and about life at the desk — as a custody sergeant, the place where every offence crosses the counter and split-second decisions are owned. That procedural backbone holds firm even when tempers flare and fists fly.

As the threads tighten, the book becomes both a propulsive crime story and a study of temptation, trauma and responsibility. Winters grinds on; the Cadet teeters; the ghosts of old cases keep step. Bleak humour surfaces, but the narrative never looks away from what violence does to people.

If you want crime fiction that comforts, this won’t be for you. If you want crime fiction that confronts — that puts you on wet tarmac beneath sodium lamps and asks what you’d do next — this is compelling. With its brutal opening in Neath, its vividly sketched cast and its concrete sense of West Wales, The Slippery Path marks Jon H. Davies as a distinctive new voice in Welsh noir.

Our rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ (5 out of 5)

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