Ray Noyes

My venture into humour captures the antics and quixotic dreams of an eccentric Welsh uncle. I created his avatar in the first volume - Disaster in His Wake - and followed him on further adventures and crazy schemes in the four-volume series, ‘The Strange Life of Horatio Evans.’ If you like Welsh humour I think you’ll like these.

Once retired from the world of nuclear physics, I researched the origins and development of the area of Cardiff in which I grew up, Grangetown. Built in the mid 1800s for workers, it was problematical both physically (having been built on a marsh) and socially (poor health, overcrowding and crime). ‘Urban Development in the Victorian Era’ was the result and is the first complete history of the area.

The Victorian era brought great innovations in manufacturing and engineering. It also brought poverty. Workhouses were but one indicator of the suffering of those at the bottom of the socio-economic ladder. I wanted to know who these people were; why was there such suffering and destitution in Victorian Britain and was it an inevitable result of industrialisation? I explore these issues in my book ‘Workhouse - the story of the poor, from care to cruelty’. The poor didn’t have a history, they were too focused on keeping alive. This is the story of their burden.

Grangetown is an inner city district of Cardiff. As a child born in the war, my memories of my post-war childhood were happy ones, but characterised by a very different way of life to that of today. ‘Island in the City - a post-war childhood in a community defined by its boundaries’ seems to have caught the interest of readers.

These books and others are shown on my web site www.raynoyes.com/