Ian Robertson is 52 years old and works successfully as a chef at the seventeenth century manor house, Llancaiach Fawr in the Taff Bargoed valley. He is a native of the Welsh valleys and this immersion feeds his creativity and obsession with its culture and people. His work although based in reality has a surreal, carnival quality. This selection of lyrical fiction is dark, witty and original. It puts small town valleys life under the microscope and...