Bleaker than a spoil heap in a blizzard, R.S. Thomas’s literary output

was much as the poet himself appeared to the outside world. He sought refuge

in the rural Welsh heartland from where he lambasted his countrymen and modern life in general.

In Welsh Landscape he wrote of “an impotent people, sick with inbreeding, worrying the carcase of an old song”. It is one of his most famous lines, uncompromising, coruscating and unlikely ever to be adopted as marketing slogan.

Not that R.S would care. God and the countryside were his great inspirations.

“God moves in mysterious ways” he often said “and putting a dog collar on R.S. Thomas was very mysterious indeed.”

Although a parish priest, serving in numerous parishes in North and Mid Wales,

he cast a sometimes forbidding figure. The sentiments expressed in his angrier poems tended towards the extreme along with some of his political views.

He was a fervent Welsh nationalist and republican who considered Plaid Cymru’s recognition of the British state unacceptable and supported political violence including the burning down of English-owned holiday homes.

Yet he married an Englishwoman (“love conquers all”), spoke English with a cut glass Oxford accent, sent his son to public school and accepted the Queen’s Poetry Medal.

R.S. Thomas did not learn Welsh until well into adulthood. Too late, he maintained, to write poetry in the language. Apart from his autobiography Neb (Nobody) and some prose, he worked entirely in English while also lamenting the decline – he called it ‘suicide’- of the old language.

Despite the teeming contradictions, hinting perhaps at the darkly mischievous sense of humour to which he treated his friends, the strength of his poetry should ensure his appeal to future generations.

In his preface to R.S. Thomas’s Song At The Year"s Turning, John Betjeman wrote; "The name which has the honour to introduce this fine poet to a wider public will be forgotten long before that of RS Thomas."