Product Description

Byron Rogers' first biography, of the novelist and publisher J.L. Carr, was read on "Book of the Week", reprinted twice, sold 5,000 copies in hardback and was hailed by Simon Jenkins in "The Times" as 'a miniature masterpiece of social history'. For his second biography, Rogers - a Welshman who moved to England - has found the perfect subject: the great Welsh poet R.S. Thomas (an English-educated man who set out to become more and more Welsh throughout his life). Thomas is now accepted, along with Ted Hughes, Philip Larkin and Seamus Heaney, as one of the great post-war British poets. All his life he was a minister in the Church of Wales, at a succession of increasingly remote country parishes. He had a reputation for being an austere, unforgiving, taciturn, wintry man. Now Byron Rogers has unearthed the amazing story of this man's life, and that of his household - one both comic, absurd and touching. Here is a man who banned Hoovers from his house on grounds of noise, whose first act on moving into an ancient cottage was to rip out the central heating, whose attempts to seek out more authentically Welsh parishes only brought him more into contact with loud English holidaymakers. To Thomas' many admirers, this will be a surprising, sometimes shocking, but at last humanising portrait of someone who wrote truly metaphysical poetry.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #56738 in Books
• Published on: 2007-07-20
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 320 pages

The Guardian
'This is biography that salutes it's subject's art; and is itself
art'

Sunday Times Culture 5th August
`Rogers creates a brilliantly original and often surprisingly funny work'

Craig Brown, Mail on Sunday
One of the most brilliant biographies I have ever read, written with a magical combination of sympathy and horror

Customer Reviews

Truly compulsive...
It's fair to say that Welsh priest and poet, RS Thomas (1913 - 2000), the oft-called `Ogre of Wales', was a man who drew strong and contradictory responses from those around him. While his literary executor, Professor Meurig Wynn Thomas wrote of him as `the Alexander Solzhenitsyn of Wales' in light of his habitual challenge to the Welsh conscience, Philip Larkin, in letters, referred to him as `Arsewipe Thomas'.
In this truly compulsive and often very funny biography, Byron Rogers goes way beyond the previously documented Thomas, the man who raged against the evils of domestic appliances and who refused to have even a refrigerator in his house because of the noise it made, who spent years with his artist wife, Elsi, while barely speaking to her, who ranted from the pulpit at his parishioners, but who would hide behind hedges rather than speak to them if he encountered them in the open.
Here we see Thomas in his many paradoxes - the Christian pacifist who nonetheless supported Welsh Nationalism and the firebombing of English holiday cottages in the 1980s - (what is one death against the death of the whole Welsh nation?) for instance, the man who despite his cut glass Oxford English tones, and the private English education he gave his son, only stopped `going West' in his quest for Welshness when he met the sea at Aberdaron in 1967, `thinking, to use his own image, to kiss the feet of the Welsh rainbow'.
Despite the paradoxes, and Thomas himself was well aware of them, he was a poet of immense, sometimes breathtaking talent, and in this delightful and very `human' biography, Byron Rogers brings us to a far greater understanding of the man and his passions. To read it is to be suffused with a sudden and urgent desire to revisit and reassess the work of this `barmy old coot'.

Zoe King - Cadenza magazine

A Dazzling Poet Illuminated
This is a truly wonderful, readable book that is as well written as R. S. Thomas' poems are. What is most astonishing is the fairness that Byron Rogers brings to it. Unsparing in its portrayal, this portrait of a tortured man touched by genius makes clear the excessive (perhaps abnormal) sensitivity to the world he observed and lived in (made manifest in the poems) as well as the shy, sometimes kind, occasionally generous man and priest. An ogre, no matter how blameworthy, could not write the poems Thomas did. For corroborating evidence, please listen closely and carefully to the CDs of R.S. Thomas reading his poems recorded the year before he died. Then go back to the poems and read them for their clarity, integrity and compassion.

Fantastic Biography About A Fantastic Man
Any book about R.S.Thomas was always going to be interesting, since he was such a unique figure, but Byron Rogers has really gone to great lengths with this book to give the reader an accurate picture of Thomas' entire life.

It does this with fantastic interviews from a vast selection of people who knew Thomas, and in the process destroys many of the myths and preconceptions that many people had about Thomas. The Media-driven idea of him being 'The Ogre Of Wales' is firmly put to rest thanks to the accounts of people who paint him to be a very intelligent, sensitive, nature-loving and sometimes very jocular individual.

There are interviews with family, friends and even people who knew him as a young man, all of which attempt to address every facet of his personality, every aspect of his being. Some of his rare and unpublished poetry is also shown here, a great privilege to anyone who has any interest in poetry - since Thomas set the standard for Welsh poetry his entire life.

Rogers builds up a picture of a man who was often intimidating to people who met him, yet in rapture to the beauty of nature and the wonders of the Universe, the theologies of life. Thomas was a man who would think nothing of slamming a door in a person's face, yet fought persistently for CND and would think nothing of dismantling traps designed for catching animals. I must truly commend Rogers for allowing me to gain such insight into the life of such a fascinating man.

Many of the interviews are amusing, some are emotive and, (on a more personal level) there is even one from a family member of mine who was good friends with Thomas. Being that Thomas was a friend of my family, I can only feel disappointment that I had not been born ten or twenty years earlier so that I could meet this individual, this powerhouse of intellect.

The more I read this book, the more involved and interested I became, and it completely drew me in. The style of writing is completely concise and engaging, free from any of the waffling hyperbole that so many 'academics' love. Rogers helps to develop the reader's interest in Thomas, and by the end, I was moved to tears at the beautiful last few paragraphs. I was genuinely disappointed when I finished this book, and I hope to seek out more literature on Thomas. Rogers has piqued my interest that much.

To conclude, this is a book which is worth it's weight in informing R.S.Thomas enthusiasts about his interesting and distinctive life. The nature-loving misanthrope, the God-questioning Priest, the fiercely Pro-Welsh CND supporter, Thomas was all this and more. I extend my thanks to Byron Rogers for such a well-written and truly captivating biography.