Books like The Welsh Language: A History

This is the history of Welsh--from its probable origins through history, including the recent push to improve Welsh literacy. (It's very up to date, including mentions of Y Gwyll/Hinterland.) That the language itself is political shouldn't be much of a surprise, but I was surprised the Welsh-speaking percentage of the Welsh population was lower than I had thought (although nowhere near as low as the Irish Gaelic speaking population of Ireland). Ms. Davies touches on the dubious linking in the early modern/early industrial period of the language/history of the bards/druids; I wish she would have explored this a little more, particularly as it relates to how the Welsh view their history today...but that really would be politically fraught. She discusses other languages, mostly in Europe, which are not national but which a sizable minority in a region speaks (e.g. Basque in the Pyrenees) vs. national languages in which a sizable minority does speak the second language (e.g., Swedish is also a national language alongside Finnish in Finland).While it's not exactly a page-turner (it took me about a week or so to finish off and on), it's accessible to someone who isn't a linguist but simply has an interest in the language. At the end there's a quick-and-dirty guide to Welsh grammar, which was unexpected but nice. It helped that I know a teeny-tiny bit of Welsh (for example, I knew when she was using the plural form of Welsh nouns) but it's not at all necessary.