CRITICAL REACTIONS
“If you’re interested in the real Cardiff as opposed to politicians’ and marketing folks’ spin this book is a must. The humour and writing style are sheer joy if you like strongly-held opinions with an amazing breadth of knowledge of all things Cardiff.”

“Wonderfully entertaining and informative. A must-buy for anyone interested in this once-great city.”

“I bought it for my father who is interested in the history of Cardiff. He constantly rings to tell me how good it is.”

“Excellent guide to the capital of Wales, however one star is deducted because of the lack of an index.”

“Cardiff’s story related with charm, wit and unrelenting vigour – the best book about Cardiff ever!”

“Full of fascinating historical background and packed with frank comments about developments.”

“I’ve been looking for such a book about Cardiff for some time, finally here it is.”

“Surpassed all expectations.”

“Brilliant, must read if you’re interested in Cardiff (or even if you’re not)”

“Very funny and acute, definitely not what you got taught at school.”

(online reviews)

“One of the most enjoyable and certainly the most controversial books ever written about Cardiff…so different from any other you have read before.”

(Brian Lee, South Wales Echo)

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CORRECTIONS & CLARIFICATIONS
The book contains a few punctuation/spelling errors, which luckily for the most part do not harm readability. Many are very minor, a missing comma or a superfluous capital letter etc, but I am a perfectionist and find any error unacceptable. I must point out that none of these errors were present in the original manuscript I submitted to the publisher. This is a list of the errors* and other clarifications, chapter by chapter:

Preface
None.

Chapter 1: Chronology
Page 12. (Year) 1000 sub-section. In the first sentence there should be no comma after “Sechnaill”. The sentence should read: “At the start of the millennium, England, born in 972 when the various Germanic tribes united, was ruled by Ethelred the Unready, Scotland by Kenneth III, Ireland by Mael Sechnaill and Brian Boru and Wales by Maredudd ab Owain and Llywelyn ap Seisyll.”
Page 20. 1550 sub-section. In the first sentence “West” should be lower-case, reading “west Wales”.
Page 22. The Butes sub-section. In the second sentence of the second paragraph it should be “sixteenth century” not “fifteenth century”.
Page 23. Continuing The Butes sub-section. In the second sentence of the third paragraph down it should be “starving” not “staving”.
Page 29. Glamorganshire Canal sub-section. In the fourth sentence of the third paragraph down the word “railway” should be upper-case, reading “…the surviving stone abutments of the Cardiff Railway bridge…”.
Page 31. 1821 sub-section. In the second sentence there should be no comma after “Glamorgan”. The sentence should read “It was now only the twenty-seventh largest town in Wales and within Glamorgan Merthyr was the industrial metropolis, Swansea the focus of trade and Cowbridge the centre of intellectual life.”
Page 35. 1920-1940 sub-section. The word “south” has twice been wrongly capitalised as “South”, in the second paragraph and the fourth paragraph.
Page 39. 1979 sub-section. In the last sentence of the first paragraph on this page, a comma after “1983” and the word “and” after “vote” have been wrongly transposed. They should be swopped so the sentence reads: “With George Thomas’s peasant cunning manipulating the public ‘debate’ from the Speaker’s chair he occupied from 1976 to 1983 and the Tories also campaigning vehemently for a ‘no’ vote, the referendum was lost by a massive 4:1 majority on one of the darkest days in Cardiff’s history.”

Chapter 2: City Centre
Page 43. Cardiff Castle sub-section. In the first sentence of the first paragraph, there should be no comma after “Black Tower”.
Page 52. In the third sentence of the first paragraph it should be “Whitmore Lane” not “Whitmoor Lane”.
Page 55. In the penultimate sentence of the last paragraph “Bus Station” should be lower-case.
Page 57. In the last sentence of the last paragraph there should be a full stop not a comma after “Working Street”, thus ending the paragraph with a sentence reading: “Completely eclipsing everything in the vicinity, this daring statement of Cardiff’s place in the European tradition was never really followed through in the rest of the town.”
Page 58. In the 16th line of the first paragraph it should be “shocking” not “hocking”.
Page 63. In the penultimate sentence of the second paragraph it should be “gothic” not “gGothic”. 

Chapter 3: Cardiff Bay
Page 69. In the last paragraph it should be “sped” not “speed”.
Page 78. In the first sentence of the second paragraph “Corner” should be lower-case.
Page 79. In the third sentence from the end of the first paragraph “(6½ ft)” should be inserted after “2 m”.
Page 87. In the first sentence of the third paragraph the word “and” rather than a comma should come between “Century Wharf” and “Isis”.

Chapter 4: Cathays
Page 90. In the first sentence of the third paragraph “Southern” should be lower-case.
Page 92. In the fifth sentence of the second paragraph there should be no comma after “racecourse”. In the last paragraph on the page the word “to” should be inserted after “not” so the sentence reads “Because his pleasure gardens at Sophia Gardens, Bute Park and Cathays Park were not to be disturbed, the TVR was obliged to skirt around the eastern edge of Cathays Park…”
Page 94. In the second sentence of the second paragraph “90 er cent” should be “90 per cent”.
Page 95. In the last paragraph insert a closing bracket after “Stuttgarter Strasse”.
Page 96. Cathays Park sub-section. “City Hall” is incorrectly lower-case throughout the sub-section: once in the introductory paragraph, five times in the City Hall entry itself, once in the Law Courts entry. In the Law Courts entry the possessive form of “Rickards” should be “Rickards'” not “Rickards’s”.
Page 97. Continuing Cathays Park sub-section. In the second paragraph of the National Museum of Wales entry “City Hall” has been incorrectly rendered in lower-case three times.
Page 101. Continuing Cathays Park sub-section. In the last paragraph of the Cardiff University entry there should be a semi-colon not a comma after the first mention of “Senghennydd Road”.
Page 102/103. Continuing Cathays Park sub-section. In the Miscellaneous entry “City Hall” is three times incorrectly lower-case.

Chapter 5: Adamsdown
Page 109. In the second sentence of the fourth paragraph “Estate” should be lower-case.
Page 110. In the third sentence of the second paragraph “Estate” should be lower-case.
Page 113. In the last sentence of the second paragraph “Estate” should be lower-case.

Chapter 6: Canton
Page 115. In the first sentence of the second paragraph “South” should be lower-case.
Page 124. In the second sentence of the last paragraph on the page “left over” should be “leftover”.

Chapter 7: Grangetown
Page 129. In the fourth sentence of the third paragraph “‘tThe Nash'” should be “‘The Nash'”.
Page 130. In the third sentence of the first paragraph there should be a semi-colon not a full stop after “figure” so the sentence reads “…the primary religious conflict in Wales was between Anglicans and Nonconformists, in which Catholics didn’t figure; the primary political conflict was class-based…”

Chapter 8: Splott
Page 144. In the third paragraph, to clarify: though the Labour council as a whole approved the building of the incinerator, Splott’s Labour councillors voted against it; and there is no scientific evidence that discharges from the incinerator are carcinogenic. In the last line of the fifth paragraph it should be “working-class” not “working-lass”.
Page 146. In the sixth line of the fourth paragraph there should be no “the” before “1977”.

Chapter 9: Gabalfa
None

Chapter 10: Roath
None.

Chapter 11: Llandaf
Page 164. “Cathedral” is incorrectly lower-case throughout the chapter, on this page in the fourth paragraph.
Page 165. “Cathedral” is incorrectly lower-case in the first paragraph. In the penultimate sentence of the fourth paragraph there should be a comma after “Green” not “Gerald” so that the sentence reads “Also on The Green, Gerald observed those graphic contraptions of medieval life: the stocks and the maypole.”
Page 166. “Cathedral” is incorrectly lower-case twice in the second paragraph, once in the fourth paragraph and twice in the last paragraph.
Page 168. “Cathedral” is incorrectly lower-case in the second paragraph.
Page 169. “Cathedral” is incorrectly lower-case twice in the last paragraph.
Page 170. “Cathedral” is incorrectly lower-case in the second paragraph.
Page 171. In the first paragraph “the” should be inserted before “south” so that part of the sentence reads “…on the south side of The Green…” In the fourth sentence of the third paragraph there should be no commas after “east” and “west” so the sentence begins “The Mynachdy estate to the east and the Ely estate to the west were built…”
Page 173. “Cathedral” is incorrectly lower-case twice in the second paragraph, once in the third paragraph and once in the fourth paragraph. In the first sentence of the third paragraph “college chapel” should be upper-case.
Page 174. “Cathedral” is incorrectly lower-case once in the first paragraph, twice in the second paragraph and once in the third paragraph. In the second sentence of the third paragraph it should be “erected” not “erecting”.
Page 176. “Cathedral” is incorrectly lower-case in the third paragraph.
Page 177. “Cathedral” is incorrectly lower-case twice in the penultimate paragraph.

Chapter 12: North
Page 183. In the third sentence of the fourth paragraph there should be no comma after “Hollybush Road”. In the next sentence there should be a hyphen between “middle” and “classes”. 

Chapter 13: East
Page 189. In the first line of the first paragraph there should be no comma after “Monmouthshire”. In the fourth sentence of the third paragraph the word “by” should be “a” so the sentence reads “…on Rumney Common, then a regularly flooded lonely marsh…”

Chapter 14: North-East
None

Chapter 15: West
Page 206. In the last sentence of the third paragraph there should be no comma after “underpass”. In the second sentence of the fifth paragraph there should be no comma after “outset”.
Page 210. In the first sentence of the second paragraph “bridge” should be upper-case as it refers to the Bridge pub. In the penultimate sentence of the last paragraph the final occurrence of the word “the” should be deleted. The sentence should read “Here, four generations of natives have been dumped so that the city could be handed over to big business.”

Chapter 16: North-West
Page 212. In the page’s first line it should be “sandstone” not “andstone”. In the first sentence of the second paragraph “South East” should be lower-case and hyphenated.
Page 217. In the last sentence of the second paragraph “Canal” should be lower-case. In the eighth sentence of the third paragraph there should be no commas before and after “Benjamin Disraeli (1804-81)”.
Page 219. In the page’s first line the word “the” should come before “First World War”. In the second sentence of the second paragraph there should be a comma after “Merthyr Road”. In the first sentence of the last paragraph there should be no comma after “1901” or “St Fagans” so the sentence reads “To tap into the coal traffic of other valleys, in 1901 the BR opened a branch line from near St Fagans which ran north-east over Llantrisant Road at Rhydlafr…”
Page 220. In the second sentence of the third paragraph the final occurrence of the word “it” should be replaced with “and” so the sentence ends “…and had the capacity to house 700 patients”.
Page 222. In the fourth sentence of the first paragraph there should be no comma after “important”. 

*note: Not included in this list is the inconsistent treatment of the word “gothic” throughout the book – sometimes it is upper-case, sometimes lower-case. Since it refers to the architectural style it should be upper-case.

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