Due to a serious illness I was diagnosed with a year last March, which involved a  number of operations afterwards over many months, my plans for the Graig Du Theatre Players had to be put on temporary hold. The convalescence period has been long and tiring. I appreciate the patience of the members of the players for not hearing from me. The plans will now progress once more. There will be updates with future posts. I continued writing and found it therapeutic. In the next blog that follows, I will post a revision to the opening scene of my three-act play; “Painting the Darkness.”

I owe a debt of gratitude to the late June R Lewis-Jones, author, of Fairford, Glos, who helped in my understanding of the strange requiem poem J. Arthur Gibbs, the author of “A Cotswolds Village” had placed in a later chapter of his book. It was entitled “A Fine Type of Englishman. Lines in Memory of W.D. Llewelyn. June told me that I had seen something from this passage in the book that no-one had ever realized before. Gibbs’s account of the events that afternoon is probably the most trustworthy. The three-act play “Painting the Darkness” is a fuller exploration of events surrounding the mysterious death of William Dillwyn Llewelyn, the son of Sir John Dillwyn of Penllergare, who was found dead in the woods at Penllergare on the evening of his engagement to Lord Dynevor’s daughter on 25^th August, 1893.  A radio version of the tragedy is to be found in “Sorrow for my Sons.” William was a noted cricketer of the day and played for England and Glamorgan. The inquest was held on Saturday 26^th August at Penllergare mansion; William was buried the following Tuesday at St. David’s Church on the estate. I have used the inquest records of the time and my findings during research for the play into certain happenings. The meeting Gibbs had with Rudyard Kipling on a voyage to South Africa in 1898 took place as June informed me. The conversation between Gibbs and Kipling is supposition and totally fictitious. The other underlying developments in the play are, again, supposition because there are no written accounts, and I have used them to fashion my play from different viewpoints. If anyone is interested in reading the full text of “Painting the Darkness, it is available as a free book, just for today, on the Kindle BookStore on Amazon.