A Welsh Elegy
SIR,—Having been privileged to read an advance copy of Emyr Humphreys's outstanding new novel, 1 was happy to find your reviewer, Goronwy Rees, endorsing my opinion about its importance.
I am afraid Mr. Rees's extra-literary judgments about Welsh society, however, will draw upon him some of the wrath expended on Sir David Llewellyn, James Morris, and the late Lord' Raglan (The Hero), with whom he has been classed recently in the Welsh public-opinion monthly Barn by corre- spondents, who have been subsequently invited to reiterate their views (also in Welsh) on BBC TV.
Mr. Humphrcys's previous award-winning novel The Toy Epic appeared as well in his own Welsh .version as Y Tri Llais (`The Three Voices'), and this situation has posed some critical questions for Welsh pundits. Apparently the fact that Mr. Rees hasn't written in Welsh, and has referred to himself as `an Englishman' in the Listener and the Welsh Anvil, etc., has been made much of and bruited about on Welsh platforms.
Mr. Humphreys's equally talented playwright friend and colleague, John Gwilym Jones, is bn record as expressing quite recently. the view that people who do not write in Welsh—the market is Eisteddfodically limited to the BBC and books at £2 per thousand words--do not belong to Y. Genedl (the Welsh nation).
KEIDRYCH RHYS
40 Heath Street, Hampstead, NW3
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