Gwyn Thomas

Gwyn Thomas was born on 6th July 1913 in Cymmer near Porth in the Rhondda Valley, the son of a miner - 'an underground ostler with no love of coal and no luck with horses'. He was the youngest of twelve children. His mother died when he was six and he was brought up by his older sister, Nana. Childhood

In 1930 a State Scholarship took him from Porth Grammar School to St. Edmund Hall, Oxford to study modern languages and a Miners Scholarship later enabled him to study for six months in Madrid before graduating in 1934. Education

His first job was as a lecturer for the Workers ' Educational Association in South Wales. Then after his marriage to Lyn Thomas in 1938 he worked as a social service officer in Lancashire and Cheshire before going to Cardigan Grammar School as French master in 1940. In 1942 he moved to Barry Grammar School where he taught Spanish for the next twenty years before devoting himself entirely to writing and broadcasting.

He was a prolific writer. Everything was written in long hand in exercise books and then typed by his wife, Lyn. Eventually he filled about five hundred of these notebooks with fourteen novels and collections of short stories, numerous radio and television plays, stage plays and essays for a variety of national and international magazines. For several years he contributed a regular Saturday column in the 'Western Mail', with occasional feature articles. The Saturday column, ostensibly a criticism of the week's television, served mainly as a launching pad from which Gwyn was able to take off on many and varied tangents.

Those of us who enjoyed his company and who knew the private man as well as the public performer, recall with undiminished pleasure his sparkling conversation, with his ability to change the tone in a word from one of fearsome indignation to exploding hilarity, making full use of his vast vocabulary to create word pictures in a dazzlingly inventive and original manner.

On a purely personal level we recall his surprising shyness, his kindness, his compassion but above all that sharp and imaginative perception of humour, which continued to shine with unfailing enthusiasm long after his health began giving cause for concern. He once wrote:-

"In the darkest night of the spirit, laughter is the signal that we are fully and unconquerably still there. And when a fine laughter maker falls still, the night itself, for a while, will be inconsolable".

Only now do we begin to see what he meant!
(High on Hope - edited by Jeffrey Robinson and Brian McCann)

Introduction