Ash on a Young Man's Sleeve

Dannie Abse was born in Cardiff in 1923. He began his medical studies at the Welsh National School of Medicine and qualified as a doctor from Westminster Hospital, London in 1950. While still a student his first book of poems was published and his first play performed. He married Joan Mercer in 1951. She had been an economics student at the London School of Economics and together in a long and happy marriage they raised three children, Susanna, Keren and David. Joan would also develop a career as a writer.For Dannie Abse further poetry volumes followed over the decades, culminating in his New & Collected Poems (2003) and RunningLate (2006). His first novel, Ash on a Young Man's Sleeve, appeared in 1954. It drew on his secular Jewish upbringing in a largecosmopolitan Cardiff family in the 1930s, it has become a much-loved modern classic, regularly studied in schools and in highereducation. His brothers at home would become well-known in public life, the politician Leo Abse and the psychoanalyst Wilfred Abse. Hisfinal novel, The Strange Case of Dr Simmonds and Dr Glas in 2002, was longlisted for the Booker Prize. His three prize-winning plays were collected in The View from Row G, while his autobiography, Goodbye, Twentieth Century, was published in 2001. His collected poems, Ask the Moon appeared in 2014 following Speak, Old Parrot (2013) which mused on the challenges of ageing, "all pavements slope uphill"; but alsoallowed compensations especially the friendship of the poet Lynne Hjelmgaard.The Presence, published in 2006, was a moving memoir celebrating and mourning his wife, who had died in a traffic accident after a collision on the M4 motorway near Porthcawl in 2005. Dannie had been driving the car at the time. They had been taking part in a poetry reading at the Porthcawl pavilion.Dannie Abse also enjoyed a successful medical career specialising in pulmonary disorders which he saw as a counterpoint and enrichment to his literary output.Dannie Abse was an enthusiast and advocate for literature especially poetry and the people who create it. He reviewed and edited manybooks and was seminal in the development of Welsh writing in English through his chair of the Welsh Academy and as part of the founding team of the publisher Poetry Press Wales, known as Seren Books. Seren's first office was housed in the garage of his house atOgmore-by-Sea. He regularly travelled throughout the UK and internationally to read from his work. He served on many boards andchaired several societies in a long career of engagement and support. He was awarded a CBE for services to poetry and literature in 2012.He died in 2014.

Introduced by Julia BellWidely acclaimed for its warm humour, lyricism and honesty, as well as its accurate evocation of the thirties, Ash on a Young Man's Sleeve has become a sung-after classic. In this delightful autobiographical novel, Dannie Abse skilfully interweaves public and private themes, setting the fortunes of a Jewish family in Wales against the troubled backcloth of the times - unemployment, the rise of Hitler and Mussolini, and the Spanish Civil War."Mr Abse writes beautifully and tenderly of the things he has seen and felt." - The Times-- Publisher: Parthian BooksDannie Abse's classic 1954 novel Ash on a Young Man's Sleeve has recently been reissued under The Library of Wales banner, a Welsh Assembly Government supported initiative that highlights and celebrates Wales's literary heritage in the English language. The novel is indeed one worth celebrating. Set in Cardiff in the 1930s, it is really an account of boyhood friendship told with a poet's humour, and set against the backdrop of turbulent times. Sometimes mistakenly read as an autobiography, this is an autobiographical novel. It draws on Abse's own life, yes, but reshapes and builds on it to create a literary landscape where Abse's characters act out the bitter-sweet themes of a pivotal time in twentieth century history. The joys of childhood and adolescence for a Jewish boy growing up in Wales are darkened by the slow intrusion of the growth of fascism in continental Europe. There is a richness to Abse's prose that can only have been shaped by his complex and sometimes apparently conflicting heritage. As he explained himself, 'I have two roots, that of Dafydd as well as David.' He is a non-Welsh speaker from a family that spoke Welsh and Hebrew, a British Jew, a Welshman who chose to largely anglicise himself, and a poet who is also a scientist. I wonder if it is the last point that matters most. As poet Gwyneth Lewis beautifully puts it in her introduction to this new edition of the book, 'he is a rare example of a person who has made a commitment to the wellbeing of the human spirit simultaneously through the arts and the sciences.' He certainly has a unique perspective that makes Ash on a Young Man's Sleeve a lyrical, insightful classic that well deserves to find a new generation of readers. -- Michael Nobbs @ www.gwales.com