I’m cutting this fine as today is the last day of the Reading Wales Month 2025 hosted by Karen at BookerTalk. Yesterday I posted my review of Resistance by Owen Sheers. I’ve also read My Beautiful Imperial by Rhiannon Lewis, a book that was a Mother’s Day present from my son, a few years ago. It was her debut novel and was listed by the Walter Scott Prize Academy as one of its 20 recommended historical novels of 2018. Originally from Cardigan, she now lives near Abergavenny. This short post really does not do justice to this beautiful book. I can only say that to realise how excellent it is, is to read it for yourself!
Victorina Press| 2017|395 pages| e-book |5*
I loved My Beautiful Imperial. It’s historical fiction set in the 19th century in both Wales and Chile. It begins in Wales in March 1865 with Davy Davies, a young teenager who is at the age when he must decide whether to work at the mill or to be a sailor like father, the captain of the Ellen of Cardigan. Life at home for him changed for ever after his young sister, Elen, was killed when their barn caught fire and his mother wrongly blames him for Elen’s death, and so he leaves home and he sets sail on the Royal Dane. As time went by he worked his way up the ranks until he became Captain of the Imperial, a steamship transporting mail and cargo up and down the Chilean coast. Then in 1891 his life changed when civil war broke out in Chile and his ship was commandeered by the government under President Balmaceda, to carry arms and transport troops.
It captured my imagination completely. I was caught up in this story of friendship, love, war and the dangers of life at sea and during the civil war in Chile history. It’s well written, so much so, that I didn’t want to put the book down. What makes it even more enjoyable is that Davy’s story is based on the actual events of the Civil War in Chile and the experiences of the author’s ancestor, Captain David Jefferson Davies. Rhiannon Lewis spent twenty years researching his life beginning with a book of etchings and an old photograph album. She discovered new evidence and has tried to make her book as historically accurate as possible, stating in her Author’s Note that it is ‘ultimately a novel and a work of fiction.’
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