A tour of Wales' lighthouses

WALES' coastline has more than 30 lighthouses, and a new book by Anglesey resident Warren Kovach details them in fascinating detail, highlighting everything from the design and equipment of these landmark buildings to the human stories behind them - their builders, the lighthouse keepers and their families.

- writes Jenny White

Kovach has a long-running fascination with Welsh history, ever since settling in Wales in the 1980s. A botanist and palaeontologist by training, he is also a developer of scientific software. His book has grown from what started as a pastime.

"I've always interested in history, and just started doing more and more about the history side of things," he says.

"For about that past 10 years or so, I've been really focusing on local history. It started off as one page on my business website back in 1992 or 95, and then Amberley Publishing spotted my website and approached me then about writing books."

Lighthouses of Wales began with research he undertook as a tour guide at South Stack on Anglesey.

"I had already learned quite a bit about how lighthouses work so that when I was at South Stack, I would be able to tell people more about the lighthouses there," he says.

"Then I spent about two years really travelling up and down Wales to visit all the different lighthouses. I made two or three trips down to south Wales to visit lighthouses there, and I was familiar with a lot of them here up in north Wales, but I was doing a bit more travelling around and just talking to people. I joined the Association of Lighthouse Keepers, which is an organisation of people who are interested in lighthouses."