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Aberfan disaster

October 2026

  • Rescue workers forming a chain to move debris in an effort to reach children trapped in Pantglas junior school, Aberfan.

    Aberfan and a lack of accountability that still affects society today

  • A children's choir sings energetically on stage, conducted beside a harpist, at Hoddinott Hall

    Aberfan: From Darkness to Light review – Mealor’s requiem offers hope amid the tears

  • John Humphrys

    double quotation markAt Aberfan, I saw fathers digging for their missing children. And the lessons society should have learned, it hasn’t

    John Humphrys
  • Katie Zacharia speaks and gestures at a White House podium during her first press briefing

    Brief letters
    Does a Trump press aide have a half-life?

  • From the Guardian archive
    Aberfan: how the Guardian reported the disaster – archive, 1966

  • ‘I survived for a reason’: Aberfan fights to preserve memory of disaster 60 years on

  • TV review
    Aberfan: The Village That Fought Back review – the contempt they have faced to get justice is sickening

  • Ian Berry obituary

December 2024

  • Tylorstown in the Rhondda valley after it was hit by a major landslide of a disused coal tip

    New authority proposed to oversee safety of coal tips in Wales

    Planned legislation includes body that would monitor abandoned tips in effort to prevent disasters

November 2024

  • From left, Ralph, Isla, Rowan and Tina Honeyfield-Connor in their flood-wrecked home in Cwmtillery.

    ‘It brings back memories of Aberfan’: coal tip collapse in storms sparks revolt in Welsh valley

    Villagers hit by extreme weather accuse Labour of neglecting flood defences as Reform UK reaps political rewards – while denying impact of climate crisis

September 2024

  • Newspaper article clippings from the time, Aberfan disaster 1966

    Carol Rumens's poem of the week
    Poem of the week: The Journalist by Grahame Davies

    A reporter on the Aberfan disaster reflects on his uneasy duty to write dispassionately about a devastating tragedy

July 2024

  • Rescue workers forming a chain to move debris, in an effort to reach children trapped in Pantglas Junior School, at Aberfan, near Merthyr Tydfil, Glamorgan, after it was engulfed by a sliding mountain of slag.

    My father’s role in investigating Aberfan – and the sight he could never forget

  • ‘A generation was completely wiped out’ … Gaynor Madgwick above Aberfan.

    How we survive
    A noise like thunder – then my classroom went black. How I lost my brother, sister and stability to the Aberfan disaster

December 2023

  • An aerial view of a landslide caused by a coal tip on a hillside above rows of terraced houses

    Wales fears another Aberfan as Westminster refuses to clean up tips

    Map shows 350 coal tips close to communities as UK government unwilling to take on costs

May 2023

  • G.B. ENGLAND. 1967. London. Queen Charlotte's Ball was the highlight of what was called "The debutante season" and "coming out". It had its roots in the 18th century when around 1780 the King, George III, held a ball for his wife’s birthday. The ball is known as the Queen Charlotte's Ball and it was proposed that the well bred and prettiest girls should attend to be presented at court to the Queen, in order that they could meet a suitable marriage partner, usually the brothers of the debs and known as the "debs delights". Only girls who had a relation who had herself been presented at court could come to the ball. When the Lord Chamberlain announced the end of the royal presentation ceremony in 1958, it provoked a record number of applications from distraught mothers. That year, 1,400 girls curtseyed in front of Queen Elizabeth II, over three days. The ball continued with the debs, bizarrely, curtseying to a giant cake in place of the Queen. The ball faded out in the 70's. 7

    Dolly Partons and debutantes: a Welshman’s view of Arizona – in pictures

    David Hurn moved from wet, socialist Wales to a scorching, rightwing state in the US – but his eye for life’s eccentricities remained unchanged
    Gallery13

May 2022

  • Local men and the emergency services dig through the mud for survivors at The Pantglas Junior School, Aberfan on 21st October 1966.

    The Premonitions Bureau by Sam Knight review – astonishing adventures in precognition

    How the Aberfan disaster prompted one psychiatrist to launch a nationwide search for ‘seers’ who could predict the future

April 2022

  • Illustration of a man in a cinema seat, between red curtains, looking at mountains on a screen

    The vision collector: the man who used dreams and premonitions to predict the future

  • Emma Brockes

    double quotation markI’m a rational person. Of course I don’t believe in the psychic world. And yet …

    Emma Brockes

March 2022

  • The effect of the Ford factory closure will have to Bridgend in south Wales, UK<br>COPY BY JOANNA PARTRIDGE Pictured: A Cofiwch Dryweryn graffiti (Remember Tryweryn) on a wall in Bridgend, Wales, UK. Wednesday 19 February 2020 Re: The effect of the Ford factory closure will have to Bridgend in south Wales, UK.

    Brittle With Relics by Richard King review – a portrait of Wales in flux

  • James Dean Bradfield, lead singer and lead guitarist of the band Manic Street Preachers in his studio in Wales. Bradfield has a new solo album called "Even in Exile" which is inspired by the Chilean Protest Singer and poet Victor Jara.

    Brittle With Relics by Richard King; Welsh (Plural): Essays on the Future of Wales – reviews

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