Give me a flagon of red wine, a book of verses, a loaf of bread, and a little idleness. If with such store I might sit by thy dear side in some lonely place, I should deem myself happier than a king in his kingdom.

A book, a woman, and a flask of wine:
The three make heaven for me; it may be thine
Is some sour place of singing cold and bare—
But then, I never said thy heaven was mine.

Written in late twelfth century Wales, the Four Branches of the Mabinogi tells the story of the births, deaths and marriages among the warrior aristocracy, on the horizon of historical memory in the last generations of the pre-Roman foretime. The quarrels, affairs and fateful interactions of these flamboyant ancestral beings were recollected not merely as history and narrative entertainment, but also as a prophetic commentary on the medieval present, holding up a mirror to the troubled and violent world of their twelfth century descendants.

In this study medievalist Will Parker offers a new translation of this work along with an extensive review of the roots of this tradition in pre-Christian myth and tribal history. But of equal importance is the dynastic machinations of the native Welsh princes, whose fascinating Celtic-speaking culture represents an overlooked aspect of our island’s story. By exploring the cultural context of Welsh dynastic politics and native bardic learning, we are able to decode the distinctive view of life, death and human nature, articulated in elegant prose by our anonymous twelfth-century author, whose vision owes as much to the sacred histories of his pagan ancestors as to the Latinate Christianity of his own age.

Published 2007 by Bardic Press. Softcover, 712 pages, ISBN-13 978-0974566757, $100, £50 (£40 direct from author)

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The Door of the Beloved:
Poems of Hafiz
Translated by Justin McCarthy, with a foreword by Andrew Phillip Smith
Published by Bardic Press, $12.95, £7.50

Boyhood With Gurdjieff; gurdjieff Remembered; Balanced Man
Fritz Peters, with a preface by Henry Miller
Published by Bardic Press, £29.95, €42.

“…devastatingly funny child’s eyes vignettes…”
James Moore, author of Gurdjieff: a Biography

In 1924, at the age of eleven, Fritz Peters first met Gurdjieff, the great master who introduced the West to the teachings of the Fourth Way.
Boyhood with Gurdjieff covers Fritz Peters’ time as a young troublemaker at Gurdjieff’s Institute in Fontainebleau, France. Gurdjieff’s unconventional yet strangely logical behavior made him the only adult who made sense to Fritz Peters. In a series of brilliantly told anecdotes, Peters relates Gurdjieff’s impromptu and surprising responses to the day-to-day problems of the Institute.
In Gurdjieff Remembered, Peters describes his adult encounters with Gurdjieff from 1932 to 1947. As an adult, Peters is more circumspect about Gurdjieff, but Gurdjieff still makes a huge impression on him as a man who lives in the present, heedless of the opinions of others.
Peters’ third and final book about Gurdjieff, the rare Balanced Man, which has never before been published in the USA, looks back at the previous two books, and to the future of Gurdjieff’s teaching. This limited edition hardcover (300 copies) for the first time includes all three of Fritz Peters' books on Gurdjieff, which have been long out of print. Also included in this Bardic Press edition is a preface by Henry Miller, the author of Tropic of Capricorn and Tropic of Cancer, and an index. The cover illustration is a previously unpublished painting by Gregory Blann.

Published January 2005 by Bardic Press. Hardcover, 372 pages, ISBN 0-9745667-6-4, £29.95, €42.

Please note that this edition is not available for sale in the USA. It is printed, published and sold in the United Kingdom.

The Gospel of Thomas and Christian Wisdom
Second Edition
Stevan L. Davies
Published by Bardic Press, $19.95

“The most original, challenging, and persuasive book about the Gospel of Thomas that I have ever seen.”
Morton Smith, author of Jesus the Magician and The Secret Gospel

“The Gospel of Thomas and Christian Wisdom... first raised my interest in this debated writing.”
Risto Uro, author of Thomas: Seeking the Historical Context of the Gospel of Thomas

Discovered in Egypt in 1945 as part of the Nag Hammadi Library, the Gospel of Thomas was long considered irrelevant to the study of Jesus’ teachings. Stevan Davies’ influential The Gospel of Thomas and Christian Wisdom overturned this view, and enabled the Gospel of Thomas to be taken seriously as a source for the earliest Christianity. This Bardic Press edition brings a classic work of accessible scholarshp back into print. A entirely new forty page introduction discusses recent developments in scholarship, looks at Thomas’ independence from the New Testament gospels, discusses the role of Mary Magdalene in the Gospel of Thomas, and offers a variety of valuable insights. A fascinating additional essay speculates that Thomas may have been used as an oracle text in a similar way to the I Ching.