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The Greats

Welsh writers who continue to touch a chord with readers worldwide.


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Dylan Thomas
Rabble-rousing writer who drank too much, died too young, and wrote lyrical, complex poems. Most over-used quote: 'Do not go gentle into that good night'. Better to murmur: The force that through the green fuse drives the flower
Drives my green age.

R S Thomas
High-minded poet and clergyman, who wrote about Wales and God. Was nominated for the Nobel Prize but died recently without winning it. Born to an English-speaking family, he taught himself Welsh but could never compose poems in it. Obscure quote: 'There was Huw Puw too.' More typical quote: We were a people bred on legends,
Warming our hands at the red past.

Aneirin
Bard of the ancient Britons, who commemorated the great battles of the Gododdin tribe. Says sternly: When Caradog rushed into battle
Like a wild boar, he cut down three chiefs;
Bull of the warband, scythe in the battle,
His hand gave meat to the wolves.

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Dylan Thomas

Dylan Thomas © akg-images



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