Autumn fare from Cockatrice books. Walter Map’s rich medley of mediaeval tall tales, ‘A Courtier’s Trifles’, and Nigel Jarrett’s wide-ranging and entertaining essays, Never Lost for Words. For sale at www.cockatrice-books.com and always underpriced. #booksky

People like Rupert Lowe are hardly alone in hating Welsh democracy. This charmer, who calls us vermin, was jailed for his antisemitic comments. By being nations, Wales and Scotland prove that the UK is a political union, like the EU. And that comparison shows us how shoddily undemocratic the UK is.

Wales is poorer than England, but thanks to devolution fewer people died of Covid. Wales has worse roads than England, but thanks to lower speed limits, fewer people are dying. Of course rich right wingers like Rupert Lowe hate the Senedd. It shows what even a poor country can achieve.

I doubt he speaks a word of Welsh. I doubt he has spent ten minutes researching our history or culture. He doesn’t even know what the Welsh national parliament is called. He wants to ban it, ultimately because it’s ‘bad for England,’ by which he means bad, not for you, but bad for people like him.

Available from today, ‘Never Lost for Words: Selected Essays’ by the award-winning poet and novelist, Nigel Jarrett. His third title with Cockatrice, priced £9.99 and available at www.cockatrice-books.com/contemporary... #booksky

Set in the Belgian Congo during the dying days of European imperialism, award-winning writer Roger Granelli’s novel is ‘a powerful novel of adversity, injustice and hope… every sentence crafted to perfection’ according to one reviewer. #booksky cockatrice-books.com/contemporary...

Wide-ranging, provocative, highly-entertaining. Cockatrice Books is proud to present Never Lost for Words: Selected Essays by the award-winning Welsh poet and novelist Nigel Jarrett. £9.99 and a snip. cockatrice-books.com/contemporary...

‘the wonder, the intensity, the profound gratitude of [sexual love]… the intimately human [cast] in an epic light, in the awesome interconnectedness of all’ Niall Griffiths’ review of the novel *Seaside Towns* by A. L. Reynolds, published by Cockatrice Books. www.cockatrice-books.com/contemporary...

When the Cockatrice was no more than a chick, still with eggshell and gratuitous adverbs clinging to its down, Roger Granelli’s #shortstories were everywhere. In 2022 it published his collected stories, ‘Any Kind of Broken Man’: www.cockatrice-books.com/contemporary...