Some Miraculous Promised Land: In Search of James Dickson Innes (2025)

PUBLISHED 8 NOVEMBER 2025.

Some Miraculous Promised Land is the story of James Dickson Innes (1887-1914) — the man who painted mountains — one of the most original and outstanding of British artists, whose star shone briefly in the years before World War One.

“Richard Gwyn has formed a profound vision of the young man behind the paintings  . . . Some Miraculous Promised Land is a nuanced and rounded perspective upon a complex, original painter who will now be better understood through this imaginative re-construction.” From the Foreword by JOHN HOOLE

“What is it about the liminality of mountains that drives an artist to the edge — to those places where the boundaries between life and death are so stark? And what drives another artist to re-trace the steps of a young J.D. Innes and dwell extensively in his world?  In this engaging revelation of a life cut short, Richard Gwyn shares Innes’ vision of the mysteries that lie between earth and sky. Surprising insights too, as this prophetic journey of loss and wonderment winds towards its inevitable conclusion. A true paean and a fascinating read.”  MENNA ELFYN

“In this vivid tale of artistic detective work, a blessedly gifted writer goes doggedly in search of a spectral painter. Richard Gwyn follows a trail of crumbs up Welsh mountains and through the French countryside to track down a visionary artist. There are other visions too, some courtesy of LSD, which match the intense colourscapes of Innes’ visual take on the world. And other subjects too, from Innes’ friend, the ursine bohemian Augustus John, through TB and germicide to the inspiring sweeps of the Welsh uplands.  Gwyn is diligent in his research and clearly delighted by his elusive subject. In this fine book he quietly paints J.D. Innes into being even as he makes of him a friend.” JON GOWER

Ambassador of Nowhere: A Latin American Pilgrimage (2024)

In Ambassador of Nowhere, Richard Gwyn takes the reader on a series of journeys across Latin America, in search of poems for his landmark anthology, The Other Tiger. He is driven through lunar landscapes in Patagonia, walks in the temperate rainforests of southern Chile and travels to a town on the Rio Magdalena that may or may not exist. From the betrayal of revolution in Nicaragua to the victims of guerrilla war in Colombia and the threat of narco gang violence in Mexico, Gwyn’s lyrical, life-affirming account pays homage to a deeply conflicted and paradoxical continent and its writers. Ambassador of Nowhere is also a book about translation, and the multiple representations of reality that the act of translation sets in motion, even as the author struggles to keep his own life on track when confronted by the demons of an earlier existence.

Praise for Ambassador of Nowhere:

“Richard Gwyn journeys through the literature and landscapes of Latin America with the attentive gaze of someone on the lookout for the unexpected, and the conspiratorial air of one who makes close friends of perfect strangers. The ‘Ambassador of Nowhere’ deals in equal measure with poets and beggars, demystifies the colonial gaze of famous authors, and delves into the mysteries of Spanish with the wisdom of an interpreter of dreams. An existential pilgrim, Gwyn explores himself, too, and ends his Odyssey at his place of origin, by his father’s side. The paradox of this solitary adventure is that its author becomes the best of travelling companions.” Juan Villoro

“Richard Gwyn is a keen explorer of Latin American maps, as attentive to small anecdotes as he is to the larger conflicts that define a society. His way of joining up poetry, political critique and autobiographical narrative is no less remarkable than his ability to make links between countries with very different traditions . . . To accompany this empathetic traveller, tragicomic chronicler and passionate scholar of an entire continent is a rare pleasure, as well as a beautiful demonstration that we only ever belong to a place if we keep our eyes open.” Andrés Neuman 

“A beautiful book. Richard Gwyn writes with a poet’s senses — the keen eye, the impeccable ear — but in his travels he is a translator, and not only of great poems, but also of whole cultures and worldviews. His vision of Latin America is generous, clear-eyed and wise.”  Juan Gabriel Vásquez

“A wonderfully rich and immersive tour through the lands and literatures of Latin America, but very much more than that. Gwyn explores translation and alcoholism, history, mortality and Welsh identity with the same acute and generous eye.” Tom Bullough

“With his customary ranging intelligence and elegance of prose Richard Gwyn here presents the rewarding and probing life of the peregrinating writer, flying back and fore between Wales and Latin America much like the migrations of Manx shearwater, which similarly bridges continents with ease. A series of informative, revealing and meditative journals – with poetry set very much at the heart – they remind us how Gwyn is one of the most companionable of writers and most perceptive of cultural guides.” Jon Gower

“Evocative and poignant . . . Ambassador of Nowhere embraces rather than laments a
sense of ongoingness, treating life itself as the ultimate poem to be translated.” Times Literary Supplement
 
“This wondrous book of discoveries . . .” Morning Star

“Gwyn has an inquisitive spirit . . . His knowledge of the region’s writers is indubitable.” The Irish Times
 
“An intimate and engrossing portrait of Latin America.” Western Mail

“Gwyn’s mind is like Latin America; adventurous, endless, immersed in the addictive warmth of those he encounters.” The Latin American Review of Books

The Blue Tent (2019)

 In a lonely house deep in the Black Mountains of south Wales, a man spends insomniac nights absorbed in the ancient texts left him by his mysterious aunt. When a blue tent appears in the field at the end of his garden, his solitary life is turned inside out.

But who owns the tent?

And when the tent’s occupants emerge, whose story are they telling? As his life unravels, the man begins to question whether he is the orchestrator or the victim of his own experiences. Are the stories that guide or steer his life – any life – real, or merely the echo of other, possible lives?

‘A mysterious, dream-like story, delicately-written and with a disturbing undertow, The Blue Tent is in the best tradition of modern oneiric fiction’. Patrick McGuinness

Reviews etc

“One of the most satisfying, engrossing and perfectly realised novels of the year.” Western Mail

“The Blue Tent is a portal to a magical Wales.” Nation Cymru

Read full review here: https://nation.cymru/culture/review-the-blue-tent-is-a-portal-to-a-magical-wales/

“The Blue Tent continues to frustrate and ensnare long after it is set down, its haze of possibilities proving for compulsive re-reading.”  Wales Arts Review

Read full review here: https://www.walesartsreview.org/books-the-blue-tent-by-richard-gwyn/

An interview with Wales Arts Review Book Club can be found here: https://www.walesartsreview.org/book-club-interview-richard-gwyn/

An interview for The Western Mail can be found on Ricardo Blanco’s Blog here . This text formed the basis for an article about the book which appeared in the Saturday edition of that newspaper on 13 July, 2019.

The Blue Tent: Cardiff BookTalk interview, 3 February, 2021.

To order from amazon.co.uk, click here.

The Blue Tent  is also available in a French version, superbly translated by Céline Leroy and published by Losfeld/Gallimard. You can order it directly from the publisher here.  Reviews (in French) available below:

https://www.bibliosurf.com/Les-invites.html

https://www.liberation.fr/culture/livres/richard-gwyn-mystere-sous-tente-20220416_3PSYPKOX7VHN7JRJQM4EGPFSZQ/

 

The Vagabond’s Breakfast (2011) 

In 2006, Richard Gwyn was given a year to live unless a suitable liver donor were found. A novelist and poet, he lost nine years of his life to vagrancy and addiction around the Mediterranean, principally Spain and Crete. This memoir is an account of his “lost” years of reckless travel and serial hospitalizations; redemption via friendship, imagination, love and fatherhood; recovery; living under sentence of death, and the life-saving gift of a hepatic graft.

The Vagabond’s Breakfast won Wales Book of the Year for Creative Nonfiction in 2012.

‘Richard Gwyn began The Vagabond’s Breakfast while recovering from a liver transplant. A memoir of the nine years of drink, drugs and vagrancy that did for his first liver, it’s a jagged tale gracefully told. Full of humane surreality, there’s something whole, even holistic, about the brokenness of the life it pieces (back) together. Like many books about illness, it’s also about health: Gwyn is a citizen of both realms, describing life with ‘two passports.”   Patrick McGuinness in TLS Books of the Year.

‘An enthralling memoir of a young man going deeply and terribly astray.’   Tessa Hadley in the London Review of Books.

‘A bloody marvellous piece of work.’   Lindsay Clarke, author of The Chymical Wedding and The Water Theatre.

‘Spicy and compelling mix of memoir and philosophy . . . a coherent and stylishly literate account  . . . a book to remember.’     Steve Dube, The Western Mail

‘Brutally honest, poetic and sometimes funny account . . . brave, original and strangely compelling.’   Morning Star

‘Best book I have read so far this year. On a par with Hilary Mantel or Joan Didion. Utterly terrifying, funny, thought provoking and seemingly without an ounce of self-pity. A masterpiece.’      Scott Pack.

‘Impactante . . . un ensayo tan íntimo y certero como On being Ill de Virginia Woolf . . .  Al terminar el desayuno con Gwyn, el lector tiene la sensación de hallarse en el Grado Cero de la salud, a un paso del reino vecino, aterrado y aliviado al mismo tiempo.’ [‘Stunning… and as intimate and accurate as Virginia Woolf’s On Being Ill. On finishing breakfast with Gwyn, the reader is left with the sensation of finding himself at health’s Absolute Zero, one step from the neighbouring kingdom, terrified and relieved at the same time.’]  Andrés Neuman in Clarín (Argentina).

To order The Vagabond’s Breakfast from amazon.co.uk click here.

Para comprar El desayuno del vagabundo, hacer clic aqui.

Deep Hanging Out (2007)

It is 1981 and while Britain enjoys the full impact of Thatcherism, Cosmo Flute, a brilliant and dissolute young painter, and his friend Ruben Fortuna, a street-wise Argentinian photographer, flee to the Greek island of Crete to indulge in alternating spells of painting, drinking, and some really Deep Hanging Out. Much of their leisure time is spent in local bistro The Unspeakable, where waiter Igbar Zoff serves squid, pig’s testicles and dodgy wine to the local loafers, and sows confusion in the minds of unsuspecting customers with his improbable tales. Events turn serious when Cosmo and Ruben accidentally witness secret US military activity on the island and are drawn into a shadowy world of espionage and counter-espionage. When Cosmo becomes involved with a young woman who carries an explosive secret, the fallout will propel Cosmo and Ruben through the death throes of the Cold War, and Crete’s bloody history of sacrifice and betrayal, to a stunning climax amid the running of the bulls in Pamplona.

‘Gwyn captures the languid confidence of youth, privilege and artistic ambition playing out in the sunshine, and this inevitably brings to mind Alan Hollinghurst’s Line of Beauty. Meanwhile, the adventures have something of John Fowles’ classic The Magus about them.’      Alex Hemingsley, The London Paper.

‘A rich, dark and beautiful novel . . .’         The Western Mail

To order Deep Hanging Out from amazon.co.uk, click here.

The Colour of a Dog Running Away  (2005)

Set in the bohemian under-belly of Barcelona, this novel weaves between an urban thriller and a Gothic historical drama focusing on Catharism, a 13th-Century historical sect. Musician and translator Lucas has reformed his nomadic ways to settle in Barcelona’s Gothic Quarter. Intrigued by some cryptic instructions on the back of an anonymous postcards, Lucas finds himself thrown into a love affair with the sophisticated Nuria. But his attraction is obsessive and vulnerable in turns: can we trust this man’s version of the story?

The Colour of a Dog Running Away was published by Parthian in the UK, Penguin Random House in the USA, and has been translated into Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, Chinese, Turkish and Macedonian.

‘The best novel of the year.’ – Scott Pack, The Bookseller

‘Clever, stylish and supremely entertaining . . . this novel offers a feast of sophisticated pleasures and a taste of deeper passions too.’ Boyd Tonkin, The Independent.

‘An excellent read . . . cleverly written, dark and funny.’ The Scotsman.

‘At once an absurdist riddle, a romantic quest, and a love letter to our anti-hero’s chosen home, Gwyn’s witty and assured first novel is as much about the different ways you can tell a story as it is about the story itself.’    The New Yorker.

‘Full of good stuff . . . short measured sentences and dreamlike dialogue . . .Gwyn’s Barcelona is one of uncertainty and magic, filled with darkly comic characters both prophetic and pathetic. Every encounter and detail of city life, precisely and unhurriedly recorded, seems significant . . . ‘  Time Out

‘Evokes the exhilarating unpredictability of urban life. . . . Gwyn’s plot is humming.’    Washington Post

‘Gwyn leaves many of his mysteries veiled, while providing enough detail to avert readers from a head start. . . . Beautifully precise.’  Newsday

‘A delightful cornucopia of thriller trappings, history lessons, existential ruminations and cheeky asides. . . . Destined to be a cult classic.’  Philadelphia City Paper

‘Gwyn’s fiction debut showcases sure-footed versatility and care with language, the poet’s fingerprints on every word.’    The Oregonian

‘This novel can only be deemed “gloriously unclassifiable.” With a sumptuous Barcelona setting, ruminations on the nature of identity, a secret history, kidnapping, cults and unreliable storytelling, wrapped up in a prose style that packs at least 4 paragraphs into a single one, Gwyn’s debut is impossible to get out of your head and absolutely worth the time to read and unspool each new revelation. ‘   Sarah Weinman Confessions of an Idiosyncratic Mind

‘A wild but entertaining ride through historic Barcelona . . . The writing is delicious.’   Deseret Morning News

‘What a stunningly original and audacious first novel by Richard Gwyn, originally published in the UK in 2005, and only now available for North American readers thanks to the insightfulness of someone at Doubleday, to whom we all should be extremely grateful . . . Richard Gwyn deserves a wide readership. One hopes this subversive little jewel will garner it for him.’ Ben McNally

To order The Colour of a Dog Running Away from amazon.co.uk, click here.

To order The Color of a Dog Running Away in the USA, click here