The first ever single-volume encyclopaedia of Wales

The eagerly anticipated publication of The Welsh Academy Encyclopaedia of Wales is a joint project by the University of Wales Press and the Welsh Academy, with significant financial support of the Arts Council of Wales through The National Lottery. Its publication is an event of national importance and marks a decade of intensive research, writing and editing to create the most important book to be published in the history of contemporary Wales.

Everything is contained within the covers of this magnificent book: Snowdonia to the pampas of Patagonia, the ancient bards to the super-modern Super Furry Animals, folk heroes to Welsh Olympians, and the men and women of Wales who have excelled in art, culture, commerce and politics.

This will be the first time all this material has been drawn together in one place. With over five thousand entries written by more than four hundred contributors and over five hundred colour and black and white illustrations, it is an ambitious undertaking. No other work has covered so many aspects of Wales's past, present, future, its people, places, arts, industries, environment and traditions.

The mechanics of making a book of this size entail approximately 280 hours of printing for the text alone, which will involve using two presses each for eight solid days. Each of its sixty-nine sections have to be gathered and bound – another five days. Then the business of stitching over a million sections will take two high-speed sewers seven days. The finished result will weigh 3 kilos.

The sheer scale of this project is easily measured by each and every one of the million and more words that make up each of the English and Welsh volumes. The editorial team, headed by eminent historian John Davies, supported by Nigel Jenkins, Menna Baines and Peredur I. Lynch, reads like a Who's Who of contemporary Wales and gives the project the intellectual and factual clout to match the unique collection of words and pictures housed in this unique book.

For our friends in America and Canada The Welsh Academy Encyclopedia of Wales will be available in Spring 2008.