100 Reasons to Celebrate Welsh History E-Book

Virginia Butler

• Herausgeber: The History Press
• Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 222

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Beschreibung

What has the small nation of Wales given to the wide world? Well, to name but a few examples: the NHS, magical drama, mail order, sleeping bags, the basis of the internet, the 'Town of Books', the first powered flight, presidents, prime ministers and Nobel prize-winners. People of Welsh heritage have helped shape the culture and constitution of the United States; they have enriched British culture in innumerable ways through writing, acting, painting, poetry, singing and architecture; they have amassed a fantastic range of sporting achievements; and they made their own unique mark on history. Welsh history deserves to be rewritten in a manner that highlights and celebrates its achievements both past and present. The 100 reasons in this book do just that. They are pathfinders to a confident tomorrow – as the Royal Badge of Wales reads in translation: 'The Red Dragon points the way'.

Leseprobe

First published 2024

The History Press

97 St George’s Place, Cheltenham,

Gloucestershire, GL50 3QB

www.thehistorypress.co.uk

© Chris and Virginia Butler, 2024

The right of Chris and Virginia Butler to be identified asthe Authors of this work has been asserted in accordancewith the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprintedor reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic,mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented,including photocopying and recording, or in any informationstorage or retrieval system, without the permission in writingfrom the Publishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978 1 80399 530 4

Typesetting and origination by The History Press

Printed and bound in Great Britain by TJ Books Limited, Padstow, Cornwall.

eBook converted by Geethik Technologies

CONTENTS

Prologues

Reason 1

Reason 2

Reason 3

Reason 4

Reason 5

Reason 6

Reason 7

Reason 8

Reason 9

Reason 10

Reason 11

Reason 12

Reason 13

Reason 14

Reason 15

Reason 16

Reason 17

Reason 18

Reason 19

Reason 20

Reason 21

Reason 22

Reason 23

Reason 24

Reason 25

Reason 26

Reason 27

Reason 28

Reason 29

Reason 30

Reason 31

Reason 32

Reason 33

Reason 34

Reason 35

Reason 36

Reason 37

Reason 38

Reason 39

Reason 40

Reason 41

Reason 42

Reason 43

Reason 44

Reason 45

Reason 46

Reason 47

Reason 48

Reason 49

Reason 50

Reason 51

Reason 52

Reason 53

Reason 54

Reason 55

Reason 56

Reason 57

Reason 58

Reason 59

Reason 60

Reason 61

Reason 62

Reason 63

Reason 64

Reason 65

Reason 66

Reason 67

Reason 68

Reason 69

Reason 70

Reason 71

Reason 72

Reason 73

Reason 74

Reason 75

Reason 76

Reason 77

Reason 78

Reason 79

Reason 80

Reason 81

Reason 82

Reason 83

Reason 84

Reason 85

Reason 86

Reason 87

Reason 88

Reason 89

Reason 90

Reason 91

Reason 92

Reason 93

Reason 94

Reason 95

Reason 96

Reason 97

Reason 98

Reason 99

Reason 100

Bibliography

Index

PROLOGUES

CHRIS’S JOURNEY

I was 6 years old when I had a troubling close encounter with the past. My father, who was a GP in Cardiff, took me on holiday to a farm owned by relatives in deepest rural Wales. It was not the complete lack of electricity there that threw me – the use of candles for lighting had a novelty value. The complete lack of toilet facilities – not even an outhouse – was more challenging.

Exposure to farmyard animals provoked my curiosity. I was staring at the cattle over a gate when I had my first alien encounter. A middle-aged man in ragged farmyard clothing came up to me and started talking to me. I could not understand a word he was saying. Because I did not respond, he started raising his voice and ended up shouting angrily at me. I had no idea – still have no idea – of what I had done wrong. I must have said something back but I don’t remember what. Essentially, man and boy from the same country were looking at each other stunned by their mutual incomprehension. He had no English, and I had no Welsh.

Later in my school life, both primary and secondary, Welsh was taught poorly. The register of the language as taught was Biblical, not conversational. The textbooks we had were old, unappealing and falling apart. Welsh history in secondary school was part of a wider history curriculum, but Welsh history did not have some underlying uplifting theme such as in Our Island Story (written by Henrietta Marshall), which took us on a journey of gradual achievement, suffusing the global map with a glory that was coloured pink. The history of Wales seemed, in comparison, littered with squabbling princelings, defeats and disasters, punctuated by sublimely inconsequential events such as some guy stealing candles from a church. Just like my earlier encounter with the farmyard alien, the Welsh language and Welsh history left me uncomprehending of its meaning or purpose.

It was in my thirty-fourth year that I learned Welsh by the wlpan method. Now I could understand conversation, Welsh newspapers and television and I could read Welsh books – a new world beckoned. That was a start.

The process of the composition of this book taught me that there is a multiplicity of reasons to be proud of being Welsh – and more than 100 of them. Some facts may not seem so consequential: The Natural History of Barbados (published in 1750) by Griffith Hughes from Tywyn featured what he called ‘The Forbidden Fruit’ – it was the first description of the grapefruit. The descendants of a Welsh buccaneer, Robert Edwards, have a claim to a large part of Manhattan. The highest mountain in the world is named after Welshman George Everest, although it must be said he never saw the peak. However, other connections with Wales are truly momentous.

Witness the immense influence that people of a Welsh background had on the shaping and culture of the United States; witness the sporting achievements of Welsh people that are disproportionate to the Welsh contribution to world population numbers; remark on the enrichment of British culture through wondrous writing, acting, painting, poetry, singing and architecture – indeed, the fabric of the stately parts of London is often the product of Welsh talent. Running as a thread through all this is something that William Shakespeare put his finger on when he referred to Glendower as ‘that great magician’ – there is a romantic mysticism that seeps out from Celtic roots apparent even to blunt Saxons.

If English readers of this book appreciate better the contribution of Welsh people and culture to Britain and the world then it helps mutual understanding, and it is an antidote to the snooty, sneering attitude, evidenced in these pages, that Welsh people sometimes still encounter. In 2001, the TV presenter Anne Robinson called the Welsh ‘irritating and annoying … useless … What are they for?’ She merits a free copy of this book.

Welsh readers of this book may quibble about our choices to be proud of – fine, they could have compiled their own offerings – but they did not. Others will now realise the glories that Welsh people have contributed to the world. Perhaps Welsh history can be written in a way that does not dwell on perceived oppression, exploitation, grievance, rebellion and poverty (these are implicit in any national history), but rather in a way that thematically accompanies us on a journey of achievements, a recognition of the shining successes of the past, and an aspiration towards the sure triumphs of the future. Perhaps even I and the alien seven decades past can make our peace at last. I wish we could have communicated.

VIRGINIA’S JOURNEY

I was born in the mid-1960s. At that time, Cardiff, although the capital of Wales, was not a city that shouted about its Welshness. Cardiff was proud to have achieved recognition as the capital in 1955 but for the first half of the century it stood tall on being the biggest exporter of the best steam coal in the world. Cardiff had long been multicultural, with many nationalities living and working in Tiger Bay, in the shipping, steel and associated industries during the Industrial Revolution and beyond. The city then had few Welsh speakers and there were no Welsh language signs apart from place names, which very often were the anglicised version. However, I was aware of being Welsh from a very early age. My mother, although she had no Welsh DNA, was a very keen supporter of Welsh rugby and we would sit in in front of the television screaming for Gareth Edwards and Phil Bennett to perform their magic. Odd, isn’t it, that English DNA can be transmuted by exposure to the Celtic spell? I knew my paternal grandparents spoke Welsh and that my grandfather’s first language was Welsh, but a Welsh cultural side was missing from our upbringing. We were not chapel-goers and the National Eisteddfod was not something that we would have attended. I was taught no Welsh at school and minimal Welsh history. I had no friends that spoke Welsh. The nearest I got to learning any was finding a small booklet about basic Welsh in the attic of our house. The only nod that my primary school made to Welsh culture was having a school Eisteddfod on St David’s Day complete with singing, poetry and dancing competitions but no Welsh.

We visited the National Museum of Wales but the collections would be displayed with little effort to set them in a Welsh cultural context. St Fagans Folk Museum has grown in its offering and it remains one of my favourite places to visit. It has expanded to explore Welsh history and culture in a more accessible way.

At the age of 11 I was sent to boarding school in Wiltshire and it seemed as if my Celtic roots might finally be erased. There was a small group of fellow pupils from Wales and we always enjoyed travelling home on the train together for the holidays. For me, entering the Severn Tunnel and seeing the now non-existent but then industrially majestic Llanwern Steel Works was an indication of being nearly home. Over time, our Welsh accents lost their lilt, often through the teasing by other pupils. Being in a school among some of the landed gentry of England, we adopted upper middle-class accents. For the next twenty years most people in my homeland thought I was English. University in London followed my schooling and after a further short time in the capital, I decided I wanted to return my Welsh roots and learn to live among my fellow Cymry. I was, in some ways, a fish out of water. I knew very few words in Welsh, very little Welsh history and was not well travelled in Wales. Joining BBC Wales in Cardiff made me realise there was so much more I needed to know about Wales. I longed to belong. Over the years, I started to educate myself in the history, politics and culture of the country that I loved to ensure I understood my heritage.

At the dawn of the new millennium in January 2000, I was travelling around India. In a small Italian restaurant on an unlit lane in Anjuna, Goa, I sat at a candle-lit table enjoying the convivial atmosphere. An elderly man was sharing my table as it was so busy. We started chatting and soon learned we were both from Cardiff. Marsden Preece was a director of the research centre at Cardiff Business School. Above the general hum of the chatter around me I caught the strains of some music in the background. I then realised it was Catatonia and the raspy tones of Cerys Matthews. I mentioned this to Marsden and he told me he had brought it out with him as he visits every year and he had given it to the restaurant. When the next track, ‘International Velvet’, started, I smiled and waited for the line ‘Every day when I wake up I thank the Lord I’m Welsh’.

I hope that this book will help ‘Awaken sleepy Wales’ to its kaleidoscope of contributions to the world.

1

Because the contribution ofWelsh people to science,culture, entertainment andsociety is regularly underplayed(usually by the English)

On 6 March 1993, the writer A.N. Wilson stated in London’s Evening Standard, ‘The Welsh have never made any significant contribution to any branch of knowledge, culture or entertainment. They have no architecture, no gastronomic tradition, no literature worthy of the name.’ Strange to relate, then, that in his work, After the Victorians, published in 2005, the same author pays tribute to John Cowper Powys as a ‘mystic genius that this craggily built Celt was’. Indeed, Powys was insistent on emphasising his Welsh descent through his father. He settled in Wales in 1935 and wrote the Welsh-themed novels Owen Glendower and Porius. He wrote in his 1934 autobiography, ‘The idea of Wales and the idea of Welsh mythology went drumming on like an incantation through my tantalized soul.’ Wilson, perhaps aware of his own inconsistency, concludes that Powys was ‘surely the greatest English (sic) novelist of his generation’.

Much of the theme of this book revolves around the pride we have in the poets, famous singers and ‘manly warriors’ that Wales has produced. As the National Anthem states in its first verse:

Mae hen wlad fy nhadau yn annwyl i mi,

Gwlad beirdd a chantorion, enwogion o fri;

Ei gwrol ryfelwyr, gwladgarwyr tra mad,

Tros ryddid collasant eu gwaed.

The land of my fathers is dear to me,

Old land where poets and singers are honoured to be;

Its warring defenders so gallant and brave,

For freedom their life’s blood they gave.

We have not confined our boundaries to famous Welsh poets, singers and soldiers. We have set our boundaries wider and wider still …

2

Because a multi-talented Welsh stardominated British musical theatrefrom the mid-1930s to 1950

Exactly forty-two years before A.N. Wilson’s magisterial pronouncement about the Welsh, 6 March 1951 marked the death of Ivor Novello. His biographer, Peter Noble, wrote of him, ‘The great Welshman who brought more happiness to more people through his many gifts than possibly any other man of our century.’

Novello was born in Cowbridge Road East, Cardiff, in 1893, to Welsh-speaking parents. He was a great composer and songwriter of some fifty songs between 1910 and 1951, including ‘Keep the Home Fires Burning’ in 1914, which became the most popular song of the First World War. His song ‘We’ll Gather Lilacs’ was a hit towards the end of the Second World War. He wrote eight popular musicals and took the romantic lead in several of them. According to The Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, Novello was ‘until the advent of Andrew Lloyd Webber, the twentieth century’s most consistently successful composer of British musicals’.

He starred in twenty-two films between 1921 and 1944. British and American readers of Picturegoer voted him their most popular star in 1928. He also acted in twenty plays between 1921 and 1944 and possessed an ‘electrifying stage presence’. In sum, this one Welshman made a highly significant contribution to music, drama, cinema and theatre. Since 1956, the Ivor Novello Awards have been awarded annually recognising excellence in music writing.

3

Because the architect of theNHS was a Welsh statesman

In May 1929, Aneurin Bevan was elected Labour MP for Ebbw Vale, which he represented until his death in 1960. His father was a miner and died of an industrial disease, pneumoconiosis, leaving his family uncompensated. For someone who was largely self-educated, it was quite an achievement for Bevan to become the youngest member of Attlee’s post-war Labour cabinet at the age of 47 and to create the NHS in circumstances of post-conflict austerity.

He designed the NHS to be comprehensive in scope, available to all and free at the time of need. It involved the nationalisation of all the 2,688 hospitals in Britain, some voluntary and some private. To achieve this massive reorganisation, he had to overcome deeply embedded vested interests, not least those represented by the doctors’ union, the British Medical Association. It was a titanic struggle with harsh words being exchanged regularly. A letter in the British Medical Journal, for instance, accused him of being ‘a complete and uncontrolled dictator’. Nevertheless, 5 July 1948 saw the opening of the doors of the National Health Service in Britain. It had taken only three years.

On his death in 1960, in a remarkably chivalrous turnaround, the British Medical Journal paid tribute to him as, ‘the most brilliant Minister of Health this country has ever had’; and, to his ‘force of character and brilliant powers of debate’. It hoped that future Ministers of Health would demonstrate similar ‘imagination and flexibility of mind’ – praise indeed for the lad who at the age of 13 had left school to go down a mine. The NHS is not without its criticisms and failures but lack of care because of inability to pay is not one of them. The service certainly needs someone with Bevan’s drive and force of character to remedy its current problems.

Bevan’s ministerial portfolio also covered housing and he played a major part in post-war reconstruction with his emphasis on council homes with gardens (later to be shamefully shifted to an emphasis on cheaper tower blocks).

Even the critic of Welsh achievements, A.N. Wilson, recognised the ‘inborn genius’ who brought about ‘human betterment’. Bevan deserves, ‘The laurel crown as the British politician who did the least harm and most good.’

4

Because Wales kept the light ofChristianity during the Dark Ages

On 19 November 1967, the atheist English historian Simon Heffer wrote in the Daily Mail, ‘It was lucky for the Welsh that they had the English to civilise them, an experiment they happily conducted with varying degrees of success over the next 7 centuries.’ Heffer seems to have put the plough before the cow. Civilisation is normally strongly associated with the development of written communication and literature. Some of the earliest Welsh poetry attributed to the Welsh bard, Taliesin, originates in the sixth century. We have to wait until the fourteenth century before we reach the ‘Father of English Literature’, Geoffrey Chaucer.

Besides, the Angles and Saxons were pagans when they arrived marauding in Britain. The historian R.H. Hodgkin wrote, ‘It was a consolation to [the Celts] to think that the invaders who had stolen their lands, and slain their clergy, were heading straight for hell-fire and an eternity of punishment.’ Certainly, Welsh missionaries were active in the Dark Ages in Ireland, Scotland, Cornwall and France. They helped keep the flame of Christianity alive in Western Europe at a time when it was threatened by pagan Vikings, Saxons and others after the collapse of the Roman Empire. Indeed, this period is often called the ‘Age of the Saints’ in Wales. Terry Breverton lists more than 900 of them in The Book of Welsh Saints. Wikipedia lists 183 English saints.

Leading the Cymric community of saints we have St David (Dewi Sant), the Patron Saint of Wales. He founded a monastic community in the west of Pembrokeshire in the sixth century. William the Conqueror visited the site and recognised its immanent holiness. The Normans began building the cathedral that we know today soon after. David was canonised in the twelfth century by Pope Callixtus II. Callixtus decreed that two pilgrimages to St David’s were considered to be worth a pilgrimage to Rome. Three pilgrimages to St David’s were equivalent to a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, so persistent travellers to west Wales could wash themselves clean of all sin.

St Patrick’s ‘Confessio’ states that he was born in Bannaven Taburniae, which many interpret as Banwen, near Ystradgynlais. The Patron Saint of Ireland was a Welshman.

In 2020, a BBC documentary showed that Llantwit Major in the Vale of Glamorgan was an important early centre of Celtic Christianity. Here was the first Christian College – ‘Cȏr Tewdws’ in honour of the Eastern Roman Emperor, Theodosius – in mainland Britain. Llantwit Major claims to be the site of the first university in Europe. At its height it boasted a remarkable number of students, some 2,000, among whom featured princes and saints. It had seven halls and 400 houses (come back, Time Team, see Reason 83). St David, St Patrick and the poet Taliesin are said to have spent some time there. The College was founded in AD 395 and it preserved tradition and faith until St Augustine came to re-establish Christianity and convert the Saxons in Britain in AD 597. It lasted hundreds of years until it was destroyed in a Viking raid in AD 987. It was rebuilt by the Normans after their conquest of Britain but as a more modest establishment.

5

Because a talented man of Welshdescent played a key role in foundingLiberia as the first African Republic

Joseph Jenkins Roberts became the first President of Liberia in January 1848. He was the son of a Welsh planter in Norfolk, Virginia. His father set his mother, Amelia, free before he was born. She then married James Roberts, who was a businessman and brought up Joseph as his own. Joseph emigrated to Liberia in 1829, where the American Colonization Society was fostering the settlement of free black people and where he became a successful trader. In 1841, the society appointed him governor of the colony. In 1847, he encouraged the legislature to press for independence and after a referendum, Liberia duly declared itself independent and became the first African Republic. He saw Liberia as a refuge for persecuted black people and as a demonstration of African capabilities for sound self-governance. In 1848, on a diplomatic mission to the UK, he met Queen Victoria, and the UK was the first country in the world to recognise Liberia’s independence. Roberts was re-elected president three more times and served eight years in all. He also served for fifteen years as a major general in the nation’s army. He founded Liberia College, where he was professor of jurisprudence and international law. Monrovia, the capital of Liberia, is named after the US president of Welsh descent, James Monroe. Monrovia has Roberts International Airport named in honour of Joseph Roberts. His birthday, 15 March, is a national holiday in Liberia.

6

Because Wales is notedfor its ‘manly warriors’

Wales has the densest concentration of castles in the world. This is partly because successive English royal houses failed for hundreds of years to completely conquer and hold down the Welsh.

According to Wikipedia, there are twenty-five Welsh Victoria Cross winners and about 600 English winners. Proportionate to their respective populations in 2021, Wales boasts more medals than England. The Welsh national anthem praises Wales for its ‘gwrol ryfelwyr’ – ‘manly warriors’. The Royal Welsh Regiment is kept at constant operational readiness, either to defend the mainland or to be sent on key missions abroad.

Without prejudice to those Victoria Cross winners whom we do not cover, let us briefly describe the exploits of six of them.

In 1916, Sergeant Major Frederick Barter from Cathays, Cardiff, was awarded the Victoria Cross for his bravery at the Battle of Festubert on the Western Front in May 1915. With seven other men of the Royal Welsh Fusiliers, he attacked German positions, severed eleven enemy mine leads with his clippers, peppered fleeing Germans with grenades and captured three enemy officers among a total bag of 102 prisoners, thus securing 500 yards of trench for the Allies. Barter was given a tremendous welcome in Cardiff when he returned. Modestly, he told the Western Mail that his exploits were, ‘All in a day’s work’. He was also to receive a Russian award for his bravery (the Cross of the Order of St George) and a Military Cross in Egypt in 1918 for conspicuous gallantry, but he eventually relinquished his commission as lieutenant in 1918 to join the Indian Army, where he was later to rise to the rank of captain.

Barter from Daniel Street, Cardiff, with his VC.

On the same day, 31 July 1917, three Welsh soldiers each won the Victoria Cross. Corporal James Llewelyn Davies from Ogmore Vale was awarded the VC posthumously for conspicuous bravery during his attack on enemy lines in Polygon Wood, Belgium. That day, Sergeant Ivor Rees from Felinfoel attacked an enemy machine gun nest at Pilckem Ridge. He killed seven enemy, captured a machine gun and rounded up thirty prisoners. He survived the war. Sergeant Robert Bye from Pontypridd was also in action that day on Pilckem Ridge, showing utmost courage and devotion to duty clearing successive enemy blockhouses and capturing many prisoners. He survived the war, too.

Tasker Watkins was born in November 1918 in Nelson, the son of an engine driver. He joined the army as a humble private, but was rapidly commissioned to the rank of second lieutenant. Watkins won the Victoria Cross in August 1944 for extraordinary bravery in Normandy, where his actions as commanding officer saved the lives of at least half of his men. Watkins led a bayonet charge through booby-trapped fields under ‘murderous’ fire from fifty armed enemy infantry and then single-handedly took out a machine gun post to ensure the safety of his unit. He was the first Welsh soldier in the British army to win a VC in the Second World War. After the war, Watkins studied law, and rose to become Presiding Judge of the Wales and Chester Circuit, Lord Justice of Appeal,1983–93, and Deputy Chief Justice of England and Wales from 1988 until he retired in 1993.

7

Because Welsh archers repeatedlysaved the English from humiliationin the Hundred Years’ War andwon the Battle of Agincourt,which led indirectly to the Tudors ofWelsh descent seizing the crown

The Hundred Years’ War between England and France lasted for 116 years (1337–1453). The war was effectively won by France, and English claims to French territory were emasculated. Two aspects of the conflict with Welsh connections are important to the flow of British history – the prowess of Welsh archers in saving England from complete humiliation; and, a twist in aristocratic genealogy that would ultimately lead to the Welsh family of Tudors coming to the throne of England.

On 26 August 1346, the English army led by King Edward III defeated a French army led by King Philip VI at the Battle of Crécy. About 15,000 men in the English army faced between 70,000 and 120,000 French soldiers. Serving with the English army were about 5,000 Welsh longbowmen. Longbows using heavy bodkin needle point arrows could penetrate plate armour at 246 yards and these archers could shoot at a rate of ten arrows a minute. The battle began with the longbowmen exchanging fire with the mercenary crossbowmen