Teleri bevan biography of abraham

Esmé: Guardian of Snowdonia

Teleri Bevan

Y Lolfa, £9.95

In 1934, at the age of just twenty-three, Thomas Firbank bought Dyffryn Mymbyr, a 2,400-acre farm perched high up in the Glyderau mountains in north Wales.

Six years later he published a memoir, I Bought A Mountain, which rapidly became an international bestseller. But by the time the book was published, the Second World War had broken out and Thomas had joined up with the Coldstream Guards.

He would never return to Dyffryn, or to the woman who had featured so memorably in his autobiography, his wife Esmé. In Esmé: Guardian of Snowdonia, Teleri Bevan, former Head of Programmes for BBC Wales radio and television, takes up Esmé’s story.

The Surrey-born daughter of one Tancred Disraeli Cummins, a Manchester businessman, and Dora Hague, who hailed from a family of prominent artists, young Esmé was keen on amateur dramatics.

She