For some two hundred years, from the late eleventh century onwards, the Mortimer family struggled to assert mastery over much of the land between Wye and Severn. - which consists of modern Radnorshire and parts of Brecknock. This brought them into collision with the native dynasty,
descendants of the shadowy figure of Elystan Glodrydd, as well as with those Welsh princes who aspired to control over a polity of Wales. The eventual triumph of the Mortimers was the backdrop for the control of much of Wales which they achieved in the early decades of the fourteenth century.
Dr David Stephenson is a former Senior Research Fellow of Wadham College, Oxford, and Kathleen Hughes Memorial Lecturer at Hughes Hall, Cambridge, Dr Stephenson is now Honorary Research Fellow in Welsh History at Bangor University. He is the author of many books, including Political Power in Medieval Gwynedd (2014), Medieval Powys: Kingdom, Principality and Lordships 1132-1293 (2016), and most recently, Medieval Wales c.1050-1332 (2019).