CATHERINE STEEL relishes a compelling novel about Augustus’s right hand man, but misses the politics, the cultural shifts, and more detail about his restoration of Rome
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The Welsh town that forged its place in labour history
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Merthyr: The Crucible of Modern Wales
by Joe England
(Parthian £20)
MERTHYR TYDFIL is the most written about town in Wales, possibly because its twin town, Dowlais, produced two distinguished historians in Gwyn Alf Williams and Glanmor Williams. Here Joe England brings his own perspective to Merthyr’s tumultuous 19th-century history.
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