Hailing from the same town as Dylan Thomas, journalist and now author Rhys Thomas has had the not-insignificant task of thinking about the country’s future for a new book, The Future Of Wales. Here, he talks about that process and its results – part self-examination, part sweeping history lesson.
If I’m going to call myself a writer, I want my words to have purpose, because it feels like a pretty embarrassing job title to have when I consider the boys at home are butchers and labourers; helping people get fed, building the roofs over our heads. For me, I think this means I need to be telling the stories and probing at the questions from the heart of where I belong, places that are often overlooked. Like Cymru.
Throughout my career as a journalist so far, wherever possible, I’ve been keen to write about things happening in and around Cymru, for publications that don’t usually think about that part of the island. I’ve been fortunate enough to write about Welsh things for the Guardian, Vice, Time Out, Dazed and GQ among others. Not bad for a kid from Laugharne, Carmarthenshire, I suppose.
One day, Melville House publishing manager Tom and I got chatting. They were working on a series of books called Futures, which would aim to offer “imaginative future visions” on a range of topics. There are not many places with as curious, undecided, and intriguing a future as Cymru. Consider the country today and you’ll realise it’s at a crossroads: we’ve incredible natural resources and crushing poverty; fierce patriotism and the opposite; an energy surplus yet some of the highest bills in the UK. We’re a rugby nation but football is increasingly taking over. Cymru’s future is completely in the air, and interesting to think about.
I felt a real sense of pride coarse through me as we signed the papers: an opportunity to sit, think and put ink to paper on my home, identity, and Hal-Robson Kanu’s goal against Belgium that fateful night in France. I sat, started writing and pretty quickly realised that while I was unsure there’d be enough to tap into for an entire book on the topic, I was wrong, I had struck Clogau. There was perhaps too much to write about.
Diving in, writing and researching everything from football and food to geography, history, the language and sustainability, I found a deep sense of optimism about this country of ours. The potential is very much there, naturally, in the land and the culture. It makes sense to consider what we think about when we think about Cymru: land of my fathers, the language. Things that have stood the test of time and are still here. Environmentally, too, Cymru’s natural ability to be an energy powerhouse is testament to the stroke of luck of being positioned where we are in the world.
It’s hard to feel anything other than pride when considering all of this, and while I thought I was pretty much as in love with the country as anyone could be, this only increased. As the book shows, I truly believe in Cymru as a country that can excel, thrive, and set an example for other small, proud nations worldwide, and probably many big ones too (we invented the NHS, after all. Diolch Aneurin Bevan).
Being Welsh can be an exercise in using the resources of the land, embracing tradition, respecting history, and being devout in our belief in the power of culture and community. That’s what I ruminate on most in this book, considering the obstacles we face politically, culturally and economically.
I think I’m pretty much right through the book and should be voted prime minister of the country forever. You may disagree. Either way, I hope a read of this will rouse feelings of how you want to think, feel, and act as a Welsh person, or as someone who thinks about Cymru. It’s a pleasure to put this country in the spotlight. Where it belongs.
The Future Of Wales is published by Melville House on Thurs 22 Feb.
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words RHYS THOMAS
