On 13 April this year, we awoke to the news that vandals had destroyed part of the 'Cofiwch Dryweryn' mural near Aberystwyth. It was, no doubt, a political act, and it's given rise to the creation of replica murals across Wales. But the most barbaric element for me was that they had smashed through the word 'cofiwch', meaning 'remember'—an attempt to erase and shatter our memory of our past.

Now, erecting monuments has its place. We are good at that in Wales. But in order for us to feel a sense of ownership of those central moments in our history, good and bad, we have to be taught about them. This is as true of recent history as it is for learning about the early Britons. In order to understand where we are, what we are, we have to know what shaped us. What is undeniable is that we are a nation of storytellers, right back to the sixth-century verses of Aneirin and Taliesin and through to the cyfarwyddion and Gogynfeirdd who relayed our myths, hearth histories and folk tales to crowds of people and their princes. Imaginative stories were, as Gwyn Alf Williams had it, the quickest way over the mountains. Stories have nourished us. They have bound us together. And that is no more true of our own stories, our own histories.

I use the word 'histories' in the plural, and I think it's vitally important that opportunities are found in the new curriculum to relay the histories we don't know as much about: the parts played by Welsh people in great historical events in other parts of the world, like the American revolution, and also to try to uncover new sources, new ways of telling the stories of people who didn't write the history books. I would associate myself too with calls for schools in Cardiff to teach pupils about the race riots that happened 100 years ago. Wales continues to be enriched by the many cultures that have contributed to our stories, and we shouldn't shy away from uglier episodes in our past in order to learn from them.