Real Wrexham

‘The best thing to come out of Wrexham is the bus to Chester’ - so goes the old saw about this workaday town. Yet is it true or fair? Wrexham, the major centre in north east Wales gets the Real treatment from novelist and poet Grahame Davies, once of Coedpoeth on the outskirts of the town. Mixing personal experience and memory with history, topography, journalism, and an unflagging interest, Grahame Davies lifts the stone and finds something rather special. It voted a resounding no in the devolution referendum and you’re just likely to hear a Liverpool or Manchester accent on the street but Wrexham straddles several lines: the border between Wales and England, the fault line of Welsh and English languages, the shift from heavy industry to post industrial society, Anglicanism and dissent.It rests in two shadows, upmarket Chester and metropolitan Liverpool yet to the west lies farming and heritage in the rural vale of Clwyd. Wrexham lager, a giant killing football club (humbled by a property speculator), St Giles’ church (one of the Seven Wonders of Wales) and Elihu Yale are among the things for which Wrexham is famous and Davies finds the town itself is just as diverse. The history, civic and personal, which he uncovers is a revelation.