From Hogwarts to Cwmderi, author has imaginary worlds all mapped out...
Have you ever watched a film, television show or read a book and wondered where on a map you might find the real-life likely setting of a fictional town or location? Perhaps you have wondered where in Scotland Hogwarts is in the Harry Potter book and film series, Jaws’ amity Island, the infamous Bates Motel from Hitchcock’s Psycho, or where Batman’s Gotham City is in relation to Superman’s Metropolis.
every Christmas many of us settle down to watch the festive classic It’s a Wonderful Life, but where on a map might you find the setting of its quaint town Bedford Falls? How about closer to home here in Wales – the village of Cwmderi from the long-running S4C soap Pobl Y Cwm for example?
Well now you can, thanks to the painstaking work of Carmarthenborn author Rhys B Davies, who has co-produced a book called atlas of Imagined Places: From Lilliput to
Gotham City. Locations from film, Tv, literature, myths, comics and video games are plotted in a series of beautiful vintage-looking maps. There are also accompanying essays.
Growing up as a child of the ‘90s, Rhys, who went to the former Qe Maridunum school in Johnstown, Carmarthen, was reared on a mix of Saturday-morning cartoons, blockbuster films and all manner of literature.
Now aged 34, he worked on the book with fellow author Matt Brown.
Rhys said: “We probably worked on the book for a year and actually only met twice in person due to the pandemic, but I’m really pleased with the result and people’s reaction to it has been very positive. Matt had started doing a map of Britain, plotting fictional towns and locations from popular culture and I got involved, submitting my own and it all just grew from there.
He added: “We decided to do the world after the UK. Some places were quite easy to work out where they are on a map – even Hogwarts in Scotland is not hard to place, even though it was said to be unplottable.”
Wales also features with several locations. Rhys added: “We have Cwmderi, which is set in the Gwendraeth valley between Carmarthen and Llanelli.”