R. S. Thomas

R. S. Thomas was born on 29 March 1913 in Cardiff, the only son of a merchant navy sailor, in an English-speaking family. Ordained an Anglican priest, he served until 1978 in rural parishes of the country, without a car or a telephone, and took the hardness of those lives as his subject. He learned Welsh at thirty, spoke it and wrote his prose in that language, but continued to write his poems in English, which he considered his failure. An uncompromising nationalist, he publicly approved of the burning of English holiday homes. He died on 25 September 2000.

In the catalogue 1

• PoetrySong at the Year's TurningR. S. Thomas · 1955Literature