Viscount Tredegar : Letters and Prose From His Biographer, William Cross

                               BOOKS ON EVAN MORGAN, VISCOUNT TREDEGAR

Evan’s Letters and Prose.  Two  compilations of the  letters and prose of the charismatic Welsh peer Evan Morgan, Viscount Tredegar,  have recently  been edited by Newport’s William  Cross, FSA Scot who is also Evan’s biographer.

Evan, Lord Tredegar, Selected Letters, Prose and Quotations: The Mystic Muse of Evan Frederic Morgan ISBN 9781905914241 Book Midden Publishing (2015)

This book offers a  wonderful  selection of letters and prose including  Evan’s intimate correspondence to his beloved  friend  ‘Krylie’  ( Cyril Hartmann) culled from the Tredegar House Archive. In addition  are Evan’s letters to the composer Cecil Gray and to literary giants George Bernard Shaw and  G K Chesterton from the British Library Manuscripts Department, published for the first time in ninety years. The letters reveal a surprisingly whimsical, witty, whilst occasionally warped side to Evan thoughts, relationships and deeds.

In addition  the compilation combines a broad base of  prose articles by Evan contributed to  magazines and newspapers offering his own personal memoir of time spent  in Algiers ( 1918); Paris ( 1919); Rome ( for the visit to the Pope at the  Vatican of  King George V and Queen Mary in 1923); and his view of Limehouse as its prospective Member of Parliament in 1929.  Evan’s vision on Catholic matters  is confronted in a serious article, but there is a lighter note  with a lyrical piece about how the Victorians are remembered. The sizable collection of quotations about  Evan will amuse and provoke.

Evan, Lord Tredegar : Further Letters and Prose Pieces: With Anecdotes About Evan  978-1905914388 Book Midden Publishing ( 2016)

Among the letters included are those to the Welsh artist Augustus John, to The Archbishop of Cardiff, Francis Mostyn and to Marie Stopes who was involved with Evan and others in the campaign to try to secure a pension for Lord ' Bosie' Douglas. Other nuggets include two odd-ball letters featuring Evan from Aldous Huxley - his friend from the tragically insecure days spent at Lady Ottoline Morrell's Garsington Manor during the Great War. Here too are the letters from Evan to Frances Stevenson, David Lloyd George's private secretary and mistress; Frances later dubbed Evan " a hopeless liar and thoroughly degenerate". The new prose pieces include Evan's essay on " Youth", his personal views of what men and women of the 1920s would have made the ideal Prime Minister's inner Cabinet, and a curiously vain piece about " This Age of Vulgarity" as well as an equally heady essay entitled " I Believe in the Roman Catholic Church".

These books  are rare,  limited numbers,   the results of  Will Cross’s ten years of research. The work  fills a gap as very little of Evan’s written words ( except his poems and verse) are  readily available  in the public domain.

Copies can be obtained direct from William Cross at 58, Sutton Road, Newport, NP19 7JF.  Cheques/ POs payable to “ William Cross”.   Cost is £7.00 per title plus £2.25 post and packing. If you buy both titles the postage is free. The books are also available on AMAZON.