Alexander Cordell (9 September 1914 – 9 July 1997) was the pen name of George Alexander Graber. He was a prolific Welsh novelist and author of 30 acclaimed works which include, Rape of the Fair Country, Hosts of Rebecca and Song of the Earth. Personal history Cordell was born in Ceylon in 1914 to an English family. He was educated mainly in China and joined the British Army at age 18 in 1932. A major in the Royal Artillery, he retired from the British Army to civilian life as a quantity surveyor for the War Office and moved to Abergavenny with his wife Rosina and daughter, Georgina. It was from here that his obvious love for Wales began to grow; in later life he referred in his writings to his mother being from the Rhondda. Cordell left Wales for spells in Hong Kong and the Isle of Man. Yet he kept coming back to Wales. He settled at various times in Abergavenny, Chepstow, Milford Haven and Wrexham. At the time of his death, Cordell lived on Railway Road in Stansty near Wrexham. He collapsed and died while walking near the Horseshoe Pass in Denbighshire. He died of natural causes. He is buried at Llanfoist near Abergavenny. The Cordell Country Inn, formerly The Royal oak , above Govilon, between Blaenavon and Abergavenny was renamed after him. It has now become a private house and is not open to the public. Writing career Some of his most famous works— Rape of the Fair Country (1959), Hosts of Rebecca (1960) and Song of the Earth (1969)—form the first part of the "Mortymer Saga", and are part of a series of Cordell novels that portray the turbulent history of early industrial Wales. Faithful to historical fact, he presents events like the birth of trade unionism and rise of the Chartist movement and the Newport Rising. The Mortymer Saga is the story of the Mortymer family, commencing in 1826, and tells of the trials of several generations of the family, set against the background of the coal mining and iron industries. In 1985, at the suggestion of a fellow South Wales author, Chris Barber, Cordell wrote a prelude to the original trilogy, This Proud and Savage Land, which starts in 1800 and tells the story of 16-year-old Hywel Mortymer, who comes from rural Mid-Wales to work in the coal mines and ironworks of the industrial