Genealogy website ancestry.co.uk has published the wills of millions of famous Britons online for the first time, including the likes of Thomas, Winston Churchill, Florence Nightingale, AA Milne, George Bernard Shaw and Beatrix Potter.

The probate record of the Welsh poet shows that effects worth just £100 were left to his widow Caitlin, which equates to roughly £2,300 in monetary value today.

Copy of the online probate record relating to Dylan Thomas. Courtesy of ancestry.co.uk

More than six million records dating from 1942 to 1966, that form part of the England and Wales National Probate Calendar, 1858-1966, have been put online.

When compared to sums left by other well known authors whose details have been unearthed during the publication of the records, Thomas' bequest seems a small sum indeed.

For instance author Lewis Carroll left £4,145 (approximately £440,000 today) to his younger brother Wilfred in 1898 while George Orwell is listed as having £9,908 (just under £280,000 today) to his name in 1950.

Meanwhile, former prime minister Churchill left behind effects totalling £304,044 (nearly £4.8 million today) to his wife Clementine in 1965.

Thomas died on 9 November 1953 in New York. The post mortem gave the primary cause of death as pneumonia, with pressure on the brain and a fatty liver given as contributing factors. He is buried at St Martin's Church in Laugharne.

Read more about Dylan Thomas on the BBC Wales Arts website.

Jenny Sullivan with her novel Full Moon

The author, who was born in Cardiff and lived in Raglan in Monmouthshire for many years, moved to Brittany in 2004. She often returns to Wales and did so last Friday to pick up the award, which was presented at Cardiff Central Library.

It's not the first time that the author has won the Tir na n-Og award, as she gained the accolade in 2006 for her historical novel Tirion's Secret Journal.

Sullivan said: "I am absolutely delighted and honoured to have won this major award for the second time. I must admit to being a compulsive writer and I'm currently working on a sequel to Full Moon."

In Full Moon average teenager Nia - "she likes make-up and boys, but she's not so keen on homework" - encounters a strange creature in her Aunty Gwen's cellar that only emerges during a full moon, and it changes her average life for ever.

The Tir na n-Og English Award recognises the exceptional quality of books with a Welsh background for children and young people.

The Welsh language winner will be announced in a ceremony at the 2012 National Urdd Eisteddfod in June.

Related links

• Welsh Books Council website
• BBC Cymru: Eisteddfod yr Urdd 2012

Gareth Evans

Evans is originally from Hirwaun in the Cynon Valley and graduated from the University of Glamorgan with a MA in Scriptwriting for Film and Television.

He was named by Variety as one of 2012's "directors to watch" and has written, edited and directed The Raid, which goes on general release in the UK this Friday.

The Raid is Evans' third directorial feature. Set in the slums of Jakarta the film's main focus and setting is an impenetrable 30 floor apartment block, a safe house that is home to some of the city's most hardened criminals.

A SWAT team is tasked with taking down the notorious drug baron who runs the safe house and it falls to the rookie member of the team Rama, played by Iko Uwais, to complete the mission.

Evans' fascination with Asian cinema began when he was a child, after he watched his first Bruce Lee film Enter The Dragon at what was probably too early an age, by his own admission.

He moved to Indonesia in 2007 and worked on a documentary called Land Of Moving Shadows about the lesser known martial art Pencak Silat.

The Raid publicity film poster

It was during filming that Evans started to realise the art's cinematic potential. In filming the documentary he met his future leading actor Iko Uwais, a student who was a delivery driver at the time.

The Raid is Evans' second foreign language film collaboration with Uwais; their first was Merantau, in which Uwais was the star and fight choreographer, and which first highlighted the art of Pencak Silat.

Gareth Evans and Iko Uwais

The Raid combines Pencak Silat with other martial art disciplines, fighting styles and weaponry and is the first in a planned trilogy of films surrounding its main character Rama. The sequel will be called Berandal.

The Raid played to sold-out crowds at the 2011 Toronto Film Festival. Unashamedly violent and gory, and most definitely one for the over 18s only, the film has picked up many rave reviews and has scooped a number of awards.

These include the Midnight Madness People's Choice Award at the 2011 Toronto International Film Festival plus both the Audience Award for best film and the Dublin Film Critics Award for best film at the Dublin International Film Festival in February 2012.

Iko Uwais in The Raid

Another string to the film's bow is that the musical score has been composed by Linkin Park vocalist Mike Shinoda, marking his début foray into the word of film score composing. He's teamed up with Joseph Trapanese for the score, who has recently worked on Tron: Legacy with Daft Punk.

The Raid opens in UK cinemas this Friday, 18 May.

Tune into this Friday's Kermode and Mayo's Film Review on Radio 5 Live to hear what Mark and Simon make of the film.

145 years on since his birth, on 13 May 1867, the name Brangwyn will always be closely associated with Swansea due to the panels. However, the Guildhall was not the original destination for the paintings.

The interior of the Brangwyn Hall. Photo taken in 1949

The panels were an original commission from the House of Lords.They voted in 1925 to commemorate the dead of World War One with a memorial that would sit in the the Royal Gallery at the Palace of Westminster.

The Royal Gallery, 100ft long and 45ft high, was - and still is - dominated by two giant paintings by Daniel Maclise. Depicting battles scenes from the Napoleonic wars, the vibrant colours used by Maclise in the paintings deteriorated drastically within two years of their hanging, and continued to fade thereafter.

The new art work was expected to compliment the faded paintings by Maclise, and would be painted in a series of 16 panels to fill the north and south walls of the gallery, covering an area of 3,000 square feet.

Lord Iveagh, Edward Guinness, was in charge of the commission and provided the fee of £20,000 at his personal expense - a huge amount of money for an artistic commission in the 1920s. He chose Frank Brangwyn as the artist to complete the task.

Brangwyn was born to a Welsh mother and English father in Bruges in 1867. He had no formal training but was incredibly versatile; his artistic output ranged from oil paintings to interior design and he had a reputation for large-scale mural work. This, together with the fact that he was one of the most famous and successful artists in Britain in the early part of the 20th century, made him the obvious choice for the commission.

Brangwyn worked on the large-scale war panels during 1925-6. They were in the same military vein as Maclise’s paintings and depicted events from World War One. Yet after months of working on the panels both he and his patron Lord Iveagh decided that the subject of war was wrong, and that the panels should be more optimistic and uplifting. Brangwyn later donated the panels to the National Museum Wales in Cardiff, where they now hang in the main hall.

Brangwyn restarted the commission with a new theme concentrated on the beauty of the Great Britain that would show the riches of the British Empire, and what the British forces had fought for during the war.

The new decorative and wildly colourful panels showed the people, beauty and the produce of the Empire, although the idea of the British Empire was fast become outmoded at the time. Scenes on the new panels included themes of fantasy, fruit, flora and fauna, from his studies of animals at London Zoo, and images from his travels.

Sadly Lord Iveagh died in October 1927, when Brangwyn had only completed only five of the 16 panels. Though Lord Iveagh’s trustees agreed to honour the commission the other peers repeatedly demanded to see the artist’s progress. The one condition that Brangwyn had made with Iveagh at the start of the commission was that he was able to work without interruption and that he wouldn’t have to show his work to anyone until the entire scheme was complete.

He had to relent and the five completed panels were erected in the Royal Gallery for the committee to view. They decided, with the advice of the Royal Fine Art Commission, that they were not suitable to be housed in the House of Lords. They were deemed inappropriate and too exuberant for the gallery as they wouldn’t sit in harmony with Maclise’s sombre paintings.

The rejection of the panels was a crushing blow for Brangwyn. He was encouraged by Iveagh’s trustees to complete the commission despite the decision and eventually finished the panels in October 1932 after seven years work.

In 1933 it was announced that the panels would be given to a municipality or a body who could house and display them. The panels were shown at the Ideal Home Exhibition in London in 1933 and happened to be viewed by Swansea councillor Leslie Hefferman.

The Brangwyn Hall in Swansea, in 1949, with the panels visible on the right

Hefferman was determined to bring the panels to Swansea but faced competition from other cities such as Cardiff, Liverpool and Birmingham who had also expressed an interest in housing the panels.

By chance, the Guildhall in Swansea was still in construction in 1933 and the architectural plans of the building could be adjusted - the ceiling height in particlular - to account for the huge panels. It was successfully selected by the trustees and in September 1934 the panels were transported to Swansea and installed in their new permanent home.

The Brangwyn Hall at the Guildhall, Swansea was officially opened on 23 October 1934 by HRH the Duke of Kent.

Brangwyn donated all the studies and preparatory drawings related to the panels to Swansea council, and are now displayed in the corridors of the Guildhall. It is thought that Brangwyn never made the journey to Swansea to see all 16 of his panels in their complete glory. He died on 11 June 1956.

Related links

• Frank Brangwyn on BBC Your Paintings
• Frank Brangwyn profile on BBC
• Frank Brangwyn website
• Wikipedia: Frank Brangwyn
• Brangwyn Hall and the Guildhall website

Ghost Parade will mark the arrival of Adain Avion in Ebbw Vale at the start of July, and will also celebrate a decade of transition in the former industrial town.

Twelve public art commissions will be taking place across the UK's nations and regions this summer to help celebrate the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games. The commissions are part of the UK Arts Councils' flagship project for the 2012 Cultural Olympiad, called artists taking the lead, and Adain Avion is the chosen project for Wales.

It is a mobile arts space, created from the transformed body of a DC-9 aeroplane, which will travel across Wales in June, July and August. Performances, installations, workshops and events with leading Welsh and international artists will take place at each of its destinations.

Ghost Parade will take place at night on Sunday 1 July. The procession will take place along the final mile of Adain Avion's journey from Swansea to Ebbw Vale until the plane reaches its destination outside the former steelwork's General Offices where it will nest for a week. The parade will include outdoor projections and archive moving images, plus music from Ebbw Valley Brass.

The General Offices in Ebbw Vale, the destination of Adain Avion in Ebbw Vale

As well as celebrating the fuselage's arrival, Ghost Parade will mark the 10th anniversary of the closure of the Ebbw Vale Steelworks.

Artist Stefhan Caddick is looking specifically for videos of the demolition of one particular part of the steelworks, called the pickler. The pickler was an iconic part of the steelworks and integral to the steel making process: it was in this part of the works that the surface oxide (or scale) formed on the hot roll coil during the hot rolling process was removed with acid.

The enormous structure spanned the valley below the village of Ty Llwyn and when it was demolished on 31 March in 2004 hundreds of people turned out to see the building come down, many armed with film and video cameras to record the event.

Here are some before and after photos, screen grabs taken a film submitted by the Ebbw Vale Institute, which show the demolition:

The Pickler before demolition...

and afterwards

Stefhan is appealing for people to come forward with their recordings of the demolition so that he can bring these individual films, each shot from differing angles and viewpoints, together and screen them simultaneously on a large screen as part of the Ghost Parade event.

If you want to contribute to the project, or you know someone who may have filmed the demolition, you can contact Stefhan on ghost@stefhancaddick.co.uk. For more information about Ghost Parade visit stefhancaddick.co.uk/ghost-parade or visit the Ghost Parade page on Facebook.

Henry Widdicombe at the 2011 festival

Described recently on Twitter as a "boutique comedy weekend", the Mach festival has attracted some of the most high-profile performers over the last couple of years. Perhaps surprisingly, given the size of the small but perfectly formed mid-Wales town.

I spoke to one of the festival directors, Henry Widdicombe, about this year's festival which begins tomorrow.

Half past four on a dreary afternoon was, I grant you, not an ideal time for an interview chat but Widdicombe's enthusiasm for the festival, and for Machynlleth in particular, shone through.

"We've achieved something quite special, I think," he said. "The main thing for us is that we've achieved what we wanted - to create somewhere where comics actually want to play, to come and spend time.

"When you're at the festival you see the performers arriving on the Friday and some of them are still around when we're doing our wrap-up meeting with all the volunteers on the Monday!"

Many faces on the 2012 line-up will be familiar to previous audiences, with the likes of Elis James, Josie Long, Isy Suttie and Jon Richardson all having performed before at the festival.

Widdicombe said: "We do have a lot of returning people, with new shows, but I think we represent what we feel is exciting right now on the live comedy circuit and it would be a shame not to bring them back."

Josie Long, who returns to Machynlleth this weekend, performing at the 2011 festival. Photo: Ed Moore, Edshots

The Machynlleth Comedy Festival was born out of a desire to give comedy in Wales a wider base outside of the major cities of Cardiff, Swansea and Newport.

"We started running gigs in Brecon, Hay-on-Wye, Abergavenny in around 2008," said Widdicombe. "We wanted to do things outside of the cities, in rural areas, and I've been in love with Machynlleth for a long time; I love the mix of population in the community there. I'd always be there looking at the venue spaces they have in this tiny town, and I felt that something was waiting to happen there as it's such a glorious place.

"We looked at festivals we liked such as Green Man, Hay, Brecon Jazz - all of the small Welsh market towns. We got a small grant from Powys County Council in 2010, which meant that we had to pick a town in Powys but I would have picked it anyway! The plan was always for Machynlleth."

The festival enjoys a good relationship with the local businesses in the town, which Widdicombe calls 'a hidden gem' countless times during our chat.

As people buy individual tickets to the shows there's no accurate way of working out the official visiting figures, but he estimates that about 500 people turned up for the first event, 1,000 attended last year's festival and they're expecting 2,000 visitors this year. To put that into perspective, that's near enough the resident population of the town.

"Our stats do show that 50% have come from over 100 miles away, whereas a quarter have come from within 10 miles, so it's a nice mix of us bringing people into the area while also having the locals come to the show."

With its growing popularity you could easily envisage the festival losing the 'boutique' element and community feel, should the organisers choose to cash in with hiked ticket prices and more events crammed into the days. However, this doesn't register anywhere near Widdicombe's radar.

"What we've tried to do from the beginning is disassociate the process from the money. It's far more important for us to create something that's special, that people go to and feel that they've stumbled across something really amazing.

"I don't think we'll go beyond a certain number; we've no intention as a festival to keep putting tents in field and growing it to a massive scale, it's more about maintaining what is so good about it."

Elis James in 2011. Photo: Ed Moore, Edshots

Festival organisers are keen to start developing the family and children's events at the festival. This year they include a clown called George Orange with his show Man On The Moon plus James Acaster Babysits, a "festival highlight" according to Widdicombe.

I asked him for more for his festival highlights: "I look at the Saturday night line-up and you've got Isy Suttie, Jon Richardson, Jarred Christmas - you could go to any of those and have a wonderful time. But for me it's always about the really exciting acts that are breaking through that you might not have heard of yet. They're always the ones worth seeing.

"There's a sketch show called Sheeps who are incredible, James Acaster's new material has just blown me away and then there's people like David Trent and Nathaniel Metcalfe that are exciting emerging acts who are going to Edinburgh for their first year.

"I think it's far more exciting going away from a festival having found someone that you can get on board with early and watch their careers flourish."

The 2012 Machynlleth Comedy Festival runs this weekend, from Friday 4 May to Sunday 6 May. Visit machcomedyfest.co.uk for more details and for the latest ticket availability.

BBC Radio will be broadcasting from the event, with Radio Wales' Jamie and Louise live from the festival on Friday 4 May and Radio 4 Extra's Comedy Club also broadcasting from the festival.

Natya STEM Dance Kampni - STEM stands for Space Time Energy Movement - will visit Brecon, Swansea, Cardiff, Pontypridd and Wrexham on the tour, which begins on Monday 30 April.

Eight members of STEM are visiting Wales and will showcase two of their productions entitled Sanjog and Vajra, the latter of which combines martial arts, contemporary dance and Kathak, a classical Indian dance style.

Natya STEM Dance Kampni

NDCWales' relationship with STEM began in 2010, as choreographers from the two companies travelled on exchange trips to learn more about each other's work and to plan future collaborations.

This led to dancers from Wales visiting India for a tour in late November 2011, where they performed in Bangalore, Chennai and Delhi and also held dance masterclasses and discussions. Now NDCWales are hosting the return exchange.

I put a few questions to Roy Campbell-Moore, the co-founder and artistic associate of NDCWales, who has been heavily involved with STEM and has visited the company in India.

Can you explain a little about your involvement in bringing STEM to Wales, and developing the relationship between the two dance companies?

"I've been travelling to India since 1985 and have always wanted to develop links with artists there to share experiences and working practices. I was introduced to Madhu Nataraj, STEM's artistic director, through a friend and when the British Council offered travel grants in 2010 to go to India to open up collaborative opportunities, I jumped at the chance.

"We hit it off immediately both personally and artistically, as STEM follows the key philosophies of National Dance Company Wales in a passion for ideas in dance through artist-led projects. They also have a totality of vision that includes a wonderful range of work in the community in which they live, teaching and reaching out to young people in every way possible.

"Since 2010 we have had three Indian dancers come to Cardiff to study what we do and how we work and NDCWales has made three visits there, teaching, running a new summer school and in November doing a main company tour to Chennai, Bangalore and Delhi.

"In addition to their Wales tour, one of their dancers will come to Cardiff in September as a choreographer-in-residence working on a large youth arts project. Plans are already advanced for a second shared summer school in 2013 in Bangalore and we hope to return to India for a second tour in late 2013, performing in Mumbai, Delhi and Bangalore."

Will the relationship between the two companies remain ongoing, is it a long term project?

"Definitely. These relationships take years to develop and mature. Apart from the already mentioned projects over the next year or two, we are continually opening up several new contacts in India and I can see a wider network of relationships growing as time goes on. Somehow, the interest in new ideas and sharing them is just too exciting and I am sure many of our younger artists in particular will have their work transformed by these visits."

Can you explain a little more about the two productions, Vajra and Sanjog?

"Sanjog, the opening work of the evening, is an out and out display piece of choreography in the classical Kathak style that allows the dancers to show off their virtuosity of technique. It's a short but snappy and sharply edged piece of work that allows audiences to feel secure in the hands of a group of talented dancers.

"Vajra is a fully developed dance-theatre work that delves into the abstract concepts of diamond and lightning seen through an Indian dance aesthetic. With an extravagant use of martial arts techniques, contemporary and kathak dance, Vajra is a lovely work that is original and beautifully performed by six dancers of the company."

There seems to be a flourishing artistic union between Wales and India at the moment. Why do you think this is, and what can artists from the two countries gain from working with each other?

"Simple... it's called investment! If you invest in artists, then they get on with it and make things happen. It's also a sign that Wales is now reaching out to new borders with strategic funding in place to open up new connections and relationships with the long-term backing to make it meaningful. It's to everyone's benefit in both countries.

"India and Wales has much to learn from each other and to share: techniques, practices, beliefs and philosophies benefit everyone all round and the exchange of new ideas, whether cultural, scientific, personal and organisations are critical to a healthy state of mind and well-being. In the end it's up to the artists to make the gains meaningful, but that is the skill of the artist... we wait to see what they all come up with."

STEM dancers during a performance

The tour, which is supported by Welsh Government, British Council and Wales Arts International, will visit:

• 30 April: Theatr Brycheiniog, Brecon - 01874 611622 / theatrbrycheiniog.co.uk
• 3 May: Taliesin Arts Centre, Swansea - 01792 60 20 60 / taliesinartscentre.co.uk
• 5 May: Dance House, Cardiff - 029 2063 6464 / wmc.org.uk
• 9 May: Muni Arts Centre, Pontypridd - 08000 147 111 / rct-arts.co.uk
• 11 May: Theatr Stiwt, Wrexham - 01978 841 300 / stiwt.co.uk

For further information visit ndcwales.co.uk.

Mab Jones

The garden first became aware of Mab's poetry after she penned a poem about one of their more unusual plants, the Chilean Puya - or Puya chilensis if you prefer the Latin.

I had a quick chat with Mab earlier today, ahead of her performance at the Cheltenham Poetry Festival.

She explained that she visited the garden recently and saw the plant, which has taken 11 years to flower. She said that the plant 'fascinated' her and she wrote Poem for the Puya as a response to it.

Her relationship with the garden has developed since. "I went to the garden a few times, met people who worked there and it grew out of that. So it kind of grew organically, and now it's blossoming!"

The year-long residency means that Mab will be at the National Botanic Garden for three days each month, combining workshops, performances and readings. Although Mab is primarily a performance poet, she's keen to use the residency as an opportunity to formulate a collection of poetry.

She said:"I want to write my first collection, so even though I'm a stage poet I want to try and write some page poetry there. But they like the fact that I'm a performance poet - I perform a lot, I like meeting people and engaging people. I'll do a few performances there to show what work I've done and I keep a blog, so people can see what I'm getting up to."

Mab has also recently returned from Japan, where she was the special guest at the Kansai St David's Society festival in Osaka, which celebrates Wales and Welsh culture.

For the event Mab, who is most at home in performing comic poetry, chose a more traditional Welsh angle to perform for the festival.

"I did a one hour show, a poetry re-telling of the tales of the Mabinogion which I haven't shown here, so I'd like to do that at some point in the garden. Also I had six local artists do illustrations for them and I'd like their work to be shown, as they were so generous doing that."

In addition to her residency role Mab will be at Abergavenny Library for World Book Night next Monday, will be involved in the Teen Poetry Slam - compering the event and mentoring the team that goes through to the final in Bristol in June - plus will be appearing at the Latitude and Dinefwr festivals later in the year.

Mab is also involved with the first All Wales Comic Verse competition, tied in with the 2012 Caerleon Festival, and will judge the event alongside other judges including Radio Wales presenter Roy Noble, Goff Morgan and Siriol Jenkins.

This weekend, though, Mab will kick-start her poet in residence role at the National Botanic Garden of Wales. She will perform on Saturday and Sunday at 2pm in the great glasshouse and will be running workshops across the two days for anybody who wants to try their hand at poetry.

Mab Jones will perform inside the great glasshouse this weekend. Photo: National Botanic Garden of Wales

David Hardy of the National Botanic Garden said: "There has long been a link between poetry and nature, resulting in some of the greatest verse ever written. As an award-winning performance poet, Mab will also be using her charm and wit to engage with visitors, and encourage a love both of nature and of poetry. We are happy to give her a home in which to do that."

Related links

• National Botanic Garden of Wales website
• Mab Jones' website

Ruthin Craft Centre will present ceramic works by Walter Keeler and Eleri Mills' textile and fibre art at the Sculpture Objects and Functional Art Fair (SOFA) in Manhattan, from this Friday 20 April until 23 April.

Walter Keeler's career spans over 50 years. The London-born artist trained at Harrow School of Art and moved to Penallt near Monmouth in 1976. He has been working in Wales since, and in 2007 was named the Welsh Artist of the Year.

An example of Walter Keeler's salt glaze work. Image courtesy of Ruthin Craft Centre. Photo: Dewi Tannatt Lloyd

Eleri Mills was born in Llangadfan, Powys and it is the rural landscape of Wales that is at the heart of her work, which combines hand-stitched pieces and mixed media paintings.

Keeler recently toured the US, in March 2012, with lectures and demonstrations culminating at the NCECA conference in Seattle, while Mills is in residency as a visiting artist at Columbia University, New York until the end of April 2012. The residency is part of the Creative Wales Ambassador role that she was awarded in 2010.

Ruthin Craft Centre has previously shown work at SOFA in Chicago but this will be the first time the centre has exhibited at the New York show.

A delegation of members from Welsh galleries that exhibit craft and applied art will also be visiting SOFA, with funding from Wales Arts International.

Representatives of Oriel Myrddin Gallery, the Mission Gallery and Mostyn will make the trip to research future opportunities between New York and Wales and to raise the profile of Welsh artists and makers.

Eleri Mills, Tirlun I (Landscape I). Image courtesy of Ruthin Craft Centre. Photo: Dewi Tannatt Lloyd

Philip Hughes, Director of Ruthin Craft Centre, said: "Walter has been potting for 50 years now. His work over the years has encompassed many different materials but he is best known for his salt glaze pieces and that's what we've chosen to show.

"They should compliment Eleri's work really well and give people an experience of Wales and the landscape, and how ceramics and textiles can sit in harmony in a presentation."

Watch a video of Hughes talking about SOFA New York and the artists being represented in 2012.

Galleries from America, Japan, Italy, Canada, Belgium, Israel, Argentina and England will also be exhibiting at SOFA New York.

Keep up to date with news from the event on the SOFA Cymru blog, sofacymru.wordpress.com, and the Facebook page.

Michikazu Matsune and David Subal during a performance of Store in Bangor. Photo: Dewi Glyn Jones

After being invited into the shop at the Eagles Meadow shopping centre, audience members will be offered a menu from which they can choose one of any 60 mini performances - costing from as little as 50p per performance.

Artists Michikazu Matsune and David Subal perform especially for each shopper, and during their performances they often create a physical product which the customer can take away with them.

Store has previously been performed as far afield as Vienna, Paris, Kyoto and New York.

Llanrwst-based company Migrations, who have been organising contemporary dance and performance events in north Wales since 2004, bring the production to Wrexham in collaboration with Wrexham County Council.

Migrations director Karine Decorne said, "Store is such a fantastic project, we're thrilled to be able to bring it to Wrexham.

"The performances are great and really affordable too, so everyone should get a bargain at Store. All are welcome to come and browse - it's a completely new way to experience performance."

Matsune during a performance of Store in Bangor. Photo: Iwan Pritchard

Store opens at 10am on Wednesday 25 April and will run until to Saturday 28 April, and is open from 10am-4pm each day. For more information visit the Migrations website.

Titian's Diana and Actaeon is currently on tour from the National Gallery and will be displayed in Cardiff from Thursday 19 April to Sunday 17 June 2012.

To mark the arrival of the 16th century Renaissance masterpiece the museum will remain open until 7.30pm on Thursday 19 April for people who are eager to get a glimpse of the painting.

Titian's Diana and Actaeon, 1556-59.
Oil on canvas: 184.5 x 202.2.
Bought jointly by the National Gallery and National Galleries of Scotland with contributions from The Scottish Government, the National Heritage Memorial Fund, The Monument Trust, The Art Fund and through public appeal, 2008

Diana and Actaeon is one of six large-scale mythologies by Titian inspired by the work of the poet Ovid, and were created for King Philip II of Spain.

The painting is jointly owned by the National Galleries of Scotland and the National Gallery, London. It was acquired for the nation in 2009 for £50 million, which was made possible with the generous contributions from private and public donors.

Last month one of its companions, Diana and Callisto, was secured for the nation for £45m.

Anne Pritchard, the assistant curator of historic art at National Museum Wales, said: "We are delighted to be hosting such an important and beautiful painting here in Cardiff. It is a true masterpiece!

"Titian's Diana and Actaeon is probably the UK's most significant public purchase of art in recent years and it's a unique opportunity for people to come and see it up close. It will be a fine complement to the historic art collection during its stay here at National Museum Cardiff."

The annual event takes place in the "timeless, mild, beguiling island of a town" that was home to Dylan Thomas during the 1930s and 40s.

It was in Laugharne that the author's relationship with his wife-to-be Caitlin blossomed, and Thomas wrote some of his best-known works during his time in the west Wales town.

Image: geograph.org.uk, copyright Jeremy Bolwell and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence

The 2012  line-up is as eclectic as ever, with a mix of musicians, poets, writers and comedians taking part in sessions across the three days.

The organisers of the festival keep it as intimate and relaxed as possible, so that audience members and performers are able to mingle and chat around the events.

Speaking at this year's event are Val McDermid, Stuart Maconie, Simon Day, Julien Temple, Howard Marks, Graeme Garden and comedian Robin Ince, among others.

Robin Ince. Image: Rob Greig

A host of other poets and writers will also be present at the weekend, such as Horatio Clare, A L Kennedy, Kate Williams, John Cooper Clarke, Fflur Dafydd, Samantha Wynne-Rhydderch, Mark Billingham and Simon Armitage.

Musical highlights will include Cerys Matthews, Y Niwl, Georgia Ruth, Meic Stevens and Laura J Martin, plus the final show of the festival will feature Jah Wobble, Keith Levene and friends performing Metal Box in Dub, a unique 2012 take on the classic 1979 album.

Photograph of Fflur Dafydd © Chris Reynolds

Venues for events at the festival include Dylan Thomas' famous Boathouse, the town's Millennium Hall, the Fountain Inn and a large marquee in the grounds of Browns Hotel, Thomas' well-known drinking haunt.

Fittingly, the weekend will also see a production of Jon Tregenna's play Buggerall, which is an updated version of Thomas' Under Milk Wood.

Weekend tickets for the festival, which runs from Friday 13-Sunday 15 April, have sold out but tickets for individual performances may still be available. Visit thelaugharneweekend.com for more information.

Related links

• Laugharne walk on BBC Wales Nature & Outdoors
• BBC Wales Arts: Dylan Thomas

Big name highlights at the 10-day festival festival include veteran American actor, singer and civil rights activist Harry Belafonte and Booker Prize winner Hilary Mantel, who will present her new novel Bring Up The Bodies, the sequel to Wolf Hall.

Other big name authors on this year's bill include Terry Pratchett, Lionel Shriver, Salman Rushdie, Martin Amis, Victoria Hislop and Ian McEwan.

I've had a scan through the programme and here are just some of the Welsh highlights on offer at this year's event.

Samantha Wynne-Rhydderch. Photo: Keith Morris

Comedian Rob Brydon will speak about his autobiography, Small Man In A Book, while Robert Minhinnick discusses his short story collection The Keys Of Babylon.

Author, BBC Radio Wales presenter and BBC Wales Arts blogger Phil Rickman talks about his novels while Damian Walford Davies and Samantha Wynne Rhydderch read from their respective works Witch and Banjo in a joint session at the festival.

Owen Sheers will talk about The Gospel Of Us, his novelisation of the National Theatre Wales production The Passion, with the producer of the three-day theatre production Lucy Davies.

There will also be screenings of the film version of the production, also called The Gospel Of Us, starring Michael Sheen that played out in Port Talbot over the 2011 Easter weekend.

Cardiff-born screen writer Abi Morgan, the woman behind The Iron Lady, The Hour and Birdsong will be in conversation with Francine Stock and veteran Welsh author Dannie Abse talks to Dai Smith about his autobiography, Goodbye Twentieth Century.

Musical entertainment at the festival includes session from Paper Aeroplanes and Cerys Matthews plus a concert with opera star Bryn Terfel. The Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama's Jazz Time club will be also hosting masterclasses and playing lunchtime concerts throughout the festival.

Paper Aeroplanes

Read more about the Hay Festival on the BBC News website and visit the Hay Festival website for the full line-up and further details.

Cardiff-based photographer Jon Pountney is the man behind the Cardiff Before Cardiff exhibition, and the much longer-running project that inspired it.

While renovating Warwick Hall in Gabalfa, Cardiff in late 2010, and turning it into what is now Cardiff Music Studios, Jon discovered a large batch of prints and negatives.

A selection of the framed prints ready for the exhibition. Images courtesy of Jon Pountney

Jon recently explained the history of the project to me: "At first I found a couple of odd photos lying around and I didn't really know what they were, and had no idea why they were there.

"I put them aside but then started finding more and more and realised after a while I'd collected a large pile. Then I found the negatives. It was quite shocking how much there was, hundreds of prints and perhaps thousands of negatives.

"Straight away I realised they were of Cardiff. I recognised a few of the places - the first few that I looked at I could tell straight away where they were. And I just thought that they were so good, it's exactly the type of photography that I like to look at."

Jon's discovery was the work of photographer Keith S Robertson. His striking body of documentary photography taken in the early 1980s gave a snapshot of life in the capital city, largely in the Adamsdown, Splott and Butetown areas of the city.

In order to discover more information about the pictures, the anonymous people in them and the photographer behind the lens himself, Jon began to share them online.

He added: "First of all I put them on Tumblr, a blog site, and within a few days they were picked up by Ed Walker at Media Wales. So within three or four weeks it was a double page spread in the South Wales Echo. It snowballed from there - I was receiving emails every day."

Negatives in Jon's studio in preparation for the exhibition, which opens on 5 April

Jon has now made contact with many people in the photographs. His discovery of the photos has inspired him to get out and take photographs in the same communities 30 years on - including taking photos of some of the original subjects.

Jon also tracked down Keith S Robertson. Now in his eighties, Robertson had previously used Warwick Hall as his studio. According to Jon he had fallen out with the people who ran the building and was told that the locks had been changed and that his possessions had been thrown out - including his photographs and camera equipment. He never attempted to gain re-entry to the building and gave up on the thought of seeing the photos again.

Jon added: "A lot of my friends have said 'you were born to find these pictures'. They could have gone in a skip or sat there for another five years if we hadn't renovated the building. It would have been a crying shame for them to be lost. I don't think this kind of discovery happens every day - it must be a fairly unique thing to find. I feel really lucky."

There have been a number of similar documentary photography projects in th UK, such as Paul Trevor's photographs of 1970's Liverpool and Robert Haines' photos of Heolgerrig near Merthyr in the 1970s, which resulted in the book Once Upon a Time in Wales.

But as Pountney stresses, this is a pretty unique case: "In those cases the photographers had kept hold of the original pictures, they hadn't lost their pictures. I think this is a unique case where the pictures have been found by another photographer, and in seeing the pictures it just made me want to go out and take pictures, to do what Keith was doing.

"I've always wanted to take photography like that but it's not the easiest thing to do; people always want to know what you're up to, and when people see someone with a camera these days they're automatically suspicious of them! That's the thing about Keith's pictures, everybody looks so friendly in them."

Getting ready for the exhibition: over 100 prints showing the work of both photographers will be on show at the Wales Millennium Centre in Cardiff

Jon's connection with the people in the photographs came with the realisation that a number of the smiling faces in the pictures are sadly no longer alive.

He added: "That's been the saddest aspect of it for me. You expect a lot of the older people to have died, you take that for granted, but a surprising number of the really young kids have passed away.

"These photos are popping up and reminding people of them, which is quite nice in a way. Keith's pictures really get that person's personality, so it's obviously sad but a lot of people are really happy that they've seen the pictures.

"In particular there's a picture of a little girl on a bike, Denise Truman, and a lot people have said how nice the picture is and that they really miss her. It's really sad when it's someone who is so young, and has passed away perhaps years ago. It's a part of the project that I hadn't expected."

The free exhibition, Cardiff Before Cardiff - Keith S Robertson and Jon Pountney, runs at the Wales Millennium Centre from Thursday 5 April to Sunday 27 May 2012.

Visit the Cardiff Before Cardiff site to browse more photographs and join in the discussion on the project's Facebook page.

Hopkins won the gong on 30 March 1992 for his role as the brilliant psychiatrist and cannibalistic murderer Hannibal Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs, adapted from the novel by Thomas Harris.

The Margam-born actor shone in the film as the murderer who helps FBI agent Clarice Starling (played by Jodie Foster) to catch serial killer Buffalo Bill.

As the late film critic and historian Dave Berry commented, "The screen career of Anthony Hopkins reached its zenith spectacularly when, in his 50s, a string of films allowed him to capitalise on his innate talent for playing reflective, introverted roles with rare intelligence."

"Hopkins played his role, occupying little screen time, with a twinkle, as Hannibal relishes the discomfort and asinine mistakes of his jailers, and the actor displayed hitherto unexplored extrovert facets of his extraordinary acting range."

Watch this archive clip of Hopkins talking to Terry Wogan just a day after his Oscar win.

Hopkins' win marked the third year in succession that a British actor had been awarded the prize, with Jeremy Irons winning the previous year and Daniel Day-Lewis in 1990.

Hopkins beat some heavyweight acting peers to the award. Fellow nominees in 1992 included Warren Beatty, for his role as gangster Ben 'Bugsy' Siegel in the star-studded Bugsy; Robert De Niro for Martin Scorsese's thriller Cape Fear; Robin Williams for Terry Gilliam's The Fisher King and Nick Nolte for The Prince of Tides.

Did you know? Billy Crystal was the host of the 64th annual Academy Awards in 1992 at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, Los Angeles. Such was the impact of The Silence of the Lambs on the cinematic world that for his first entrance Crystal was wheeled on stage, by two uniformed orderlies, strapped to a stretcher and wearing a replica of the Hannibal Lecter mask Hopkins had worn in the film.

The Silence of the Lambs scooped five Oscars in total at the 64th Academy Awards, for best actress in a leading role and best director for Jodie Foster and Jonathan Demme respectively plus best screenplay and best picture.

Following his win in 1992, Hopkins has received three more Oscar nominations so far in his career.

In 1994 he was again nominated for best actor in a leading role for the screen adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro's best-selling novel The Remains of the Day (1993), in which he played butler James Stevens. He was beaten to the prize by Tom Hanks, who won for his role in Philadelphia.

Hopkins was nominated in same category in 1996 for Nixon (1995), the biographical story of the former US president Richard Nixon. He was pipped this time by Nicholas Cage for Leaving Las Vegas.

In 1998 he received a nomination for Best Actor in a Supporting Role for Steven Spielberg's Amistad (1997) but he was beaten to the statuette by Robin Williams for his role in Good Will Hunting.

Try out your Oscar knowledge with a mini quiz - it's just for fun, find the answers at the foot of the article.

Quiz: Wales at the Oscars

1. For what film did Richard Burton receive an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor?
2. How many Oscar nominations did Burton receive in total?
3. Which Neath-born actor won the best actor gong in 1946 for The Lost Weekend?
4. What was the name of Hugh Griffith's character in Ben-Hur, which secured him the best supporting Oscar?
5. And in which year did Griffith scoop the Oscar?
6. Christian Bale won the best actor gong in 2011 for The Fighter, but in which Welsh town was he born?
7. Which two Welsh-language films have been shortlisted in the Oscar category for best foreign language film?
8. For which film did Rachel Roberts receive a nomination for best actress? (She missed out on the Oscar but picked up the Bafta for the role in the same year.)
9. For which film did Catherine Zeta Jones scoop the Oscar for best supporting actress, and in what year did she claim the gong?
10. Jack Howells' 1963 Oscar-winning documentary short, starring Richard Burton, was about which Welsh author?

Related articles

• Anthony Hopkins profile on BBC Wales Arts
• Top 10 Welsh actors: Anthony Hopkins
• Wales at the Oscars

Related links

• Anthony Hopkins on The Internet Movie Database website
• Oscar Legacy: The 64th Academy Awards (1992)
• The 64th Academy Awards article on Wikipedia
• Oscars official website
• YouTube: Billy Crystal's Hannibal Lecter skit

Quiz answers: 1. My Cousin Rachel (1952), 2. Seven: six for best actor and the one for best supporting actor, 3. Ray Milland, 4. Sheik Ilderim, 5. 1960, 6. Haverfordwest, 7. Paul Turner's Hedd Wyn (in 1994) and Paul Morrison's Solomon and Gaenor (in 2000), 8. This Sporting Life, 9. Chicago in 2003, 10. Dylan Thomas.