Frown by Frown

Ian Hamilton

  • Autobiographies by R.S. Thomas
    Dent, 192 pp, £20.00, May 1997, ISBN 0 460 87639 2
  • Furious Interiors: Wales, R.S. Thomas and God by Justin Wintle
    HarperCollins, 492 pp, £20.00, November 1996, ISBN 0 00 255571 9
  • Collected Poems 1945-90 by R.S. Thomas
    Phoenix, 548 pp, £9.99, September 1995, ISBN 1 85799 354 3

R.S. Thomas’s four autobiographies (four memoiressays, really) were written in Welsh, and the most substantial of the four – first published in Wales a dozen years ago – was titled Neb, which means ‘nobody’: as in ‘a nobody’ or ‘nobody very special’. And this fits with our uncertain view of Thomas these past four decades. Has this poet been too humble? Or has he been too proud? Is he to be admired for self-effacement or chastised for self-absorption? Over the years, Thomas has asked himself such questions many times, and his replies have been as non-definite as ours.

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