A love letter to my Welsh ancestry

Writer Eira Morgan-Jones shares how her family's heritage inspired her debut novel

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Author Eira Morgan-Jones

(Author Eira Morgan-Jones)

I THINK like many works of creativity, it wasn’t until the thing was long finished that I really began to see all the influences that brought Sentinel of the Sun together.

It's so glaringly obvious to me now that I can’t believe was ever unaware of it, but at its core it is a love letter to my family.

My parents met in the 1970s at what is now the University of South Wales, but back then was the Polytechnic of Wales in Barry, where they were both training to become teachers.

My mum, Penarth born and raised, studied Welsh and taught it at St Martins Comprehensive in Caerphilly after she graduated - her own father had been a proud first-language speaker.

My dad moved back temporarily to his own parents’ house in Stockbridge in Hampshire, but they stayed together and visited back and forth.

Circumstances arose that pushed my mum, quite without consciously intending, to move temporarily to Winchester to stay with my dad.

Predictably, this “temporary” situation became more and more permanent as children and careers arrived, but for my mum, no matter how long she lived in Hampshire, home meant Wales - and she worked hard to make sure my brother and I knew it.

My dad had grown up a British forces nomad, moving from one army town to another, and didn’t retain a particular sense of allegiance to anywhere, but his ancestry also traces back to south Wales - my paternal grandfather wore the three feathers tattooed on his forearm.