Find a book
A Book a Month
We can send a book a month for six or twelve months - the perfect gift. More »
Café Music
Listen to our album of Café Music while browsing the site. More »
Siân James
Siân James, author of One Afternoon
Siân James (née Davis) was born in1930 in Coed-y-bryn, Ceredigion: her Welshness was always central to her identity. She went to the University College of Wales, Aberystwyth and in 1958 married the actor Emrys James; they moved to a 17th-century thatched house near Stratford-on-Avon where they brought up four children and Emrys established himself at the RSC as one of the leading actors of his generation. In 1975 Siân published One Afternoon, which won the Yorkshire Post Book Award for a first book. Her third novel, A Small Country (1979), is considered an important contribution to Anglo-Welsh literature. Over the next thirty years she published ten more novels, two collections of short stories and a memoir. After Emrys died in 1989 she continued to write, and for a while lived in Cardiff, teaching creative writing at the University of Glamorgan; later she returned to Worcestershire to live near her family. She died in 2021.
