Real Port Talbot

Port Talbot is for many a version of the 'Valleys-by-the-sea', and certainly its heavy industry, shoehorned into a narrow belt of flat land, feels like a twenty-first century throwback to coal-mining Rhondda. The brainchild of an old-fashioned coal baron, and of the politically-inspired siting of heavy industry in the post-war period, Port Talbot in fact has a more genteel past as a resort, and may have a 'clean' future as a centre of environmental research and practice. There is culture, too, thanks to the town's other famous export: actors Richard Burton, Anthony Hopkins and Michael Sheen.

Lynne Rees was born in Port Talbot. Her other books include the poetry collection Learning How to Fall (Parthian, 2005; ISBN 9781902638607) and the novel The Oven House (Bluechrome, 2004; ISBN 9781904781332). She also co-edited the Gomer Press anthology Another Country: Haiku Poetry from Wales (2011; ISBN 9781848513068). She now lives near the North Downs in Kent.