EDDIE Butler will attend the Penarth Book Festival tomorrow where he will discuss his new book.

The rugby player and commentator turned novelist will appear at Penarth RFC at 7.30pm.

Eddie Butler’s new book tells the tale of ex-Welsh rugby international who is invalided out of the professional game but returns to his struggling village club, little knowing that he is embroiled in a darker, more troubling world than that of mere rugby football.

The Head of Gonzo Davies takes us from modern-day Millennium Stadium professionalism back to the amateur days and the decline of Welsh heavy industry, and even further back to pre-World War Two valley life.

“Eddie Butler is a rare talent and after the runaway success of The Greatest Welsh XV Ever we’re delighted to be publishing his first novel. It’s a thriller with a rugby setting, and is full of action, intrigue and humour. But because it’s Ed, it also has more sophisticated layers of story than first meets the eye, and should appeal to those who like to read and think at the same time!” says Ceri Wyn Jones, the editor at Gomer Press.

“The basic premise is why is this guy, this former Welsh rugby player, called Gonzo Davies,” explains Eddie Butler. “So we go back in time – there’s a distant family history of why he is called Gonzo and then there’s a slightly more recent time-lapse when we visit Gonzo’s glory days when he had his moment as a star rugby player and what became of that.

“Then we have his present because he’s re-emerged as an ageing player in his twilight years back in his home village. His team just happen to find themselves on a little cup run – and the cup run is set against turbulence within Wales. The country is going through what is described in the book as the Welsh hell.

“There are three unconnected flashpoints, social troubles that bring Wales into the national consciousness. The elements of Gonzo’s different past, his rugby present and this turbulence within Wales they all march together and come to a head.”

Tickets are available from Griffin Books, Penarth Book Festival Hotline on 07787 848337 or online at www.penarthbookfestival.org.uk.