WALES: A COUNTRY OF LITERARY LOCATIONS

Wales is a nation of great beauty, as well as great talent in the creative sector, speci ically with Cardiff growing as a cultural and creative hub. Due to the picturesque landscapes here, Wales is invariably at the heart of literature, whether that be as inspiration, setting or adaptations. Wales is home to many famous authors, writers, playwrights and creatives - it is clearly a country that exudes and breeds imagination. The rich history in folktales is a strong theme in Welsh writings and goes hand in hand with the beautiful setting of the Brecon Beacons in Hilda Vaughan’s Iron and Gold. Published in 1948, Vaughan’s novel reimagines ‘The Lady of Llyn y Fan Fach’- a classic Welsh fairy-bride folktale. This feminist novel about women’s experience in the patriarchal twentieth centu-ry uses the mountainous terrain of the Brecon Beacons to demonstrate the human yearning both for equality and escapism into beauty. When curating a guide to Welsh topography in literature, it is essential to mention Dylan Thomas’ immense in luence both in writing and also in the celebration of Welsh beauty and setting. Dylan Thomas was a popular and fa-mously cynical poet. Born in Swansea, Thom-as fell in love with Laugharne, a town in South Carmarthenshire, and swiftly moved there in 1934. Outside of Thomas’ literature, his legacy lies within his Boathouse, now a museum, tea-room and shop in Laugharne where you can visit the home of Thomas’ works and under-stand the Wales he wrote about in his poetry.

Laugharne is a microcosm of Thomas’ Wales, shown in this quotation from Dylan Thomas’ BBC Radio Broadcast titled ‘Laugharne’ from 1953: “They envy Laugharne its minding of its own, strange, business; its sane dis-regard for haste; its generous acceptance of the follies of others, having so many, ripe and piping, of its own; its insular, feather-bed air; its philosophy of “It will all be the same in a hundred years.”

“They deplore its right to be, in their eyes, so wrong, and to enjoy it so much as well. And, through envy and indignation, they label and libel it a legendary lazy little black-magical bedlam by the sea. And is it? Of course not, I hope.”

Laugharne was instrumental in Thomas’ writing of Under Milk Wood - a poem and radio drama commissioned by the BBC and adapted for the theatre. Using Laugharne as inspiration for his work, Thomas set his creation in the mythical town of Llareggub, playing up to the idea that nothing much really happened there! The setting of rural Wales is used repeatedly, especially in literature intending to show the mundane, prosaic lifestyle. Te yn y Grug (Tea in the Heather as the English translation) is a novella by Kate Roberts set in the historic county of Caernarfonshire in the hills south of Caernarfon (now known as Gwynedd). This novella follows the young Begw from the ages of four to nine in small windows of their lives in a small Welsh village. In this no-vella, the adventures of childhood are depict-ed and Roberts gives a charming insight into the quaint goings on in 1950s rural Wales. Despite the use of rural Wales in literature as a setting of the ordinary, Wales has also been used as the setting for fantastical and otherworldly literature. Authors from all over the world have come to Wales for inspi-ration for mystical and fantastical fictional lands. J.R.R. Tolkien is one of the authors who has famously taken inspiration from Welsh landscapes in their writing. This au-thor of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings is rightly associated with rich worldbuilding, idyllic settings and immense descriptions. It is not only the setting of Wales that Tolkein was captivated by, but also the language with the “hint of a language old and yet alive”. The Shire is a region of Tolkien’s fictional Middle Earth in The Lord of the Rings, understood to be based on rural Wales and the Black Mountains. The fantastical landscapes of Wales are used both in inspiration for these high-fantasy novels, and also frequently in movie adapta-tions of novels. For example, the Harry Potter franchise made use of picturesque Pembrokeshire for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part One. Director David Yates used Freshwater West as the filming location of The Shell House in the penultimate Harry Potter film. Fans of the franchise are able to visit this National Trust site on the coast and pay a tribute to Dobby the house elf, who died and was buried at this site in the films. From these examples of Welsh literary lo-cations, it is evident that Wales is a na-tion that inspires creativity, fascination and pride. Hopefully we can continue to see our beautiful country at the heart of literature.

Words by Molly Openshaw Design by Molly Openshaw