Real Wrexham: Becoming the City by Sara Erddig

Book Review – June 2026 To paraphrase Rod Stewart, Wrexham is in my heart, it’s in my soul, it’s my best friend. It shaped me and continues to be a dominant influence in my life – despite the fact that my current house is actually on the border of Flintshire and Cheshire. Wrexham is where I live, if we take ‘living’, as the council did during the City of Culture bid, to mean wherever you ‘work, rest and play’. The ‘Real’ series is a collection of books by the Welsh independent publisher, Seren. Featuring an extensive roll call of Welsh, English and Scottish towns and cities, each ‘Real’ title delivers far more than any conventional guide book. Instead each volume concentrates on the quirky and offbeat side of its subject and includes the subjective memories and very personal experiences of its author. Wrexham has been given the ‘Real’ treatment before, with Grahame Davies’s Real Wrexham published in 2007. Davies’s investigation was comprehensive and insightful. But a lot has changed…