Second Welsh Trilogy

Cordell’s second Welsh trilogy returns to the history of labour and protest through three separate protagonists and regions. The Fire People centres on the Merthyr Rising of 1831 and the execution of Dic Penderyn; This Sweet and Bitter Earth moves from North Wales slate quarries to the Rhondda coalfield and the Tonypandy disturbances; Land of My Fathers connects Anglesey copper mining and the Dowlais ironworks with the Chartist era.
The books are linked less by a single family than by Cordell’s sustained interest in the people whose labour powered industrial Wales. Together they cover almost a century of mining, migration and political conflict, showing how repeated disputes over wages, safety, representation and ownership changed form while preserving the same basic struggle over who benefited from industrial wealth.