News Archive

Roland Mathias

1915 - 2007

Roland Mathias died on 16 August, a few weeks short of his ninety-second birthday. A service of thanksgiving for the life of this remarkable man was held a week later at The Plough, the old (founded 1699) and beautiful Congregational chapel in Brecon he regularly attended. The chapel was crowded. Representatives of Academi and a number of writers were present. It was a dignified and memorable occasion.

Although they might recognise the name, many newer, younger Academi members may be unfamiliar with the career and achievement of Roland Mathias, and the contribution he made to the present state of literature in Wales. In May 1986, at the height of his powers as poet, short story writer, literary critic and historian, he suffered a stroke from which he never fully recovered. And so Wales lost the services of arguably the most influential figure in Welsh writing in English of that time.

In The Anglo-Welsh Review, the magazine he founded with his friend Raymond Garlick and edited 1961-1976, he consistently argued for the cultural wholeness of Wales, adding spans to bridge the gap between Welsh and English language interests. He promoted the talent of Welsh writers in English and campaigned on their behalf for a proper critical appraisal of their worth by the media and the University of Wales. He gave an enormous amount of time and intellectual energy to these tasks. Early evidence of real progress in university courses, examination syllabuses and more thoughtful reviewing was emerging when he fell ill. It is doubly sad to reflect now that a new volume of poems was nearing readiness, both previous books, Absalom in the Tree (1971) and Snipe’s Castle (1979) having won the Welsh Arts Council’s Poetry Prize, and that only a twelvemonth before he had published A Ride Through the Wood, a magisterial collection of critical essays on major writers, including Alun Lewis, Dylan Thomas and Emyr Humphreys. Anglo-Welsh Poetry 1480-1980, the ground-breaking anthology he co-edited with Raymond Garlick had appeared in 1984 and his Illustrated History of Anglo-Welsh Literature was with the publisher.

By 1986 he had achieved a very great deal in writing and editing. But that was not all. As a man quick and subtle in thought and marvellously articulate, he was always in demand as speaker, lecturer and committee member. He very rarely turned down requests and his sense of responsibility would not allow him to give short measure in any endeavour. He was Chairman of the English Language Section of Yr Academi Gymreig 1973-78 and Chairman of the Arts Council’s Literature Committee 1976-79.

Those who had the immense good fortune to know him will forget neither the sureness of his adherence to principle in life and literature, nor the mischievous twinkle and genial good humour that characterised his conversation and correspondence. We are fortunate too, that in his later years he had recovered sufficiently to assist the compilation and editing of his Collected Short Stories and Collected Poems, which again reveal him as one of the outstanding literary talents in Wales in the latter half of the twentieth century and an incomparable poet of Nonconformist Christianity. The Roland Mathias Prize for Welsh writing in English, which he endowed, will help keep his memory green.

Sam Adams