What's New - Home - Login

R. S. Thomas was born in Cardiff, the only child of Thomas Hubert and Margaret (née Davis). The family moved to Holyhead in 1918 because of his father's work in the merchant navy. He was awarded a bursary in 1932 to study at the University College of North Wales, Bangor, where he read Classics. In 1936, having completed his theological training at St. Michael's College, Llandaff, he was ordained as a priest in the Church in Wales. From 1936 to 1940 he was the curate of Chirk, Denbighshire, where he met his future wife, Mildred (Elsi) Eldridge, an English artist. He subsequently became curate at Tallarn Green, Flintshire.

They married in 1940 and remained together until her death in 1991. Their son, Gwydion, was born 29 August 1945. The Thomas family lived on a tiny income and lacked the comforts of modern life, largely by the poet's choice. One of the few household amenities the family ever owned, a vacuum cleaner, was rejected because Thomas decided it was too noisy.

For twelve years, from 1942 to 1954, Thomas was rector at Manafon, in rural Montgomeryshire. It was during his time at Manafon that he first began to study Welsh and that he published his first three volumes of poetry, The Stones of the Field, An Acre of Land and The Minister.

Thomas' poetry achieved a breakthrough with the publication of his fourth book Song at the Year's Turning, in effect a collected edition of his first three volumes, which was critically very well received and opened with Betjeman's famous introduction. His position was also helped by winning the Royal Society of Literature's Heinemann Award.

He learnt the Welsh language at age 30, too late in life, he said, to be able to write poetry in it. The 1960s saw him working in a predominantly Welsh speaking community and he later wrote two prose works in Welsh, Neb (), an ironic and revealing autobiography written in the third person, and Blwyddyn yn Ll?n, (). In 1964 he won the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry.

He retired from the church in 1978, and he and his wife relocated to "a tiny, unheated cottage in one of the most beautiful parts of Wales — where, however, the temperature sometimes dipped below freezing", according to Theodore Dalrymple.

Free from the constraints of the church he was able to become more political and active in the campaigns that were important to him. He became a fierce advocate of Welsh nationalism, although he never supported Plaid Cymru because he believed they did not go far enough in their opposition to England.

In 1996 he was nominated for the Nobel Prize for Literature (the winner that year was Seamus Heaney). After his death at age 87, an event celebrating his life and poetry was held in Westminster Abbey with readings from Heaney, Andrew Motion, Gillian Clarke and John Burnside. R S Thomas's ashes are buried close to the door of St. John's Church, Porthmadog, Gwynedd.

Although he was a clergyman, he wasn't always charitable and was known for being awkward and taciturn. Some critics have interpreted photographs of him as indicating he was "formidable, bad-tempered, and apparently humorless".

Thomas was an ardent supporter of CND and described himself as a pacifist, but he supported the Meibion Glynd?r fire-bombings of English-owned holiday cottages in rural Wales. On this subject he said in 1998, "what is one death against the death of the whole Welsh nation?"

He was also active in wildlife preservation and worked with the RSPB and other, Welsh, volunteer organisations for the preservation of the Red kite. Typically he resigned his RSPB membership over their plans to introduce non-native kites to Wales.

The poet's son, Gwydion, a resident of Thailand, recalls his father's sermons, in which he would "drone on" to absurd lengths about the evil of refrigerators, washing machines, televisions and other modern devices. Thomas preached that they were all part of the temptation of scrambling after gadgets rather than attending to more spiritual needs. "It was the Machine, you see," Gwydion explained to a biographer. "This to a congregation that didn’t have any of these things and were longing for them."

Although he may have taken some ideas to extreme lengths, Theodore Dalrymple wrote, Thomas "was raising a deep and unanswered question: What is life for? Is it simply to consume more and more, and divert ourselves with ever more elaborate entertainments and gadgetry? What will this do to our souls?"

Almost all of Thomas' work concerns his twin passions, the Welsh landscape and the Welsh people. Underlying these twin themes are the politics. Even simple, lyrical descriptions of a hillside or a field can be read as a political statement. His views on the position of the Welsh people, as a conquered people are never far below the surface. His religious views, as might be expected from a clergyman, are also present in his works.

These concerns mark out his work as particularly distinctive and, perhaps, an easy subject for satire. The reader, though, is left in very little doubt as to the poet's sincerity and commitment. His earlier works focus on the personal stories of his parishioners, the farm labourers and working men and their wives. He shatters the cosy view of the traditional 'pastoral' poem with harsh and vivid descriptions of life as it was lived.

The beauty of the landscape, although ever-present, is never suggested as a compensation for the low pay or monotonous conditions of farm work. This direct view of 'country life' comes as a challenge to many English writers writing on similar subjects. It might even be seen as a challenge to his more famous contemporary Dylan Thomas.

His later works were of a more metaphysical nature, more experimental and focusing more upon his spirituality. Laboratories of the Spirit (published in 1975) gives, in its title, a hint at this change in subject matter. Thomas described this shift as an investigation into the 'adult geometry of the mind'.

He also experimented with publishing poetry alongside original artworks by other artists.

Despite his nationalism Thomas could be hard on his fellow countrymen. Often his works read as more of a criticism of Welshness than a celebration. He himself said there is a "lack of love for human beings" in his poetry. Other critics have not been so harsh. Al Alvarez said: "He was wonderful, very pure, very bitter but the bitterness was beautifully and very sparely rendered. He was completely authoritative, a very, very fine poet . . . "

Thomas' final works commonly sold 20,000 copies in Britain alone.