Gwyn Thomas (6 July 1913 – 13 April 1981) was a Welsh writer who has been called 'the true voice of the English-speaking valleys'.
Gwyn Thomas was born in Cymmer, Porth in the Rhondda Valley, the youngest of 12 children to coalminer Walter Morgan Thomas and his wife. His mother died when he was aged six, and he was resultantly brought up by his sister, often with handouts from the local soup kitchen.
After winning a scholarship, Thomas studied Sp...
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Gwyn Thomas (6 July 1913 – 13 April 1981) was a Welsh writer who has been called 'the true voice of the English-speaking valleys'.
Gwyn Thomas was born in Cymmer, Porth in the Rhondda Valley, the youngest of 12 children to coalminer Walter Morgan Thomas and his wife. His mother died when he was aged six, and he was resultantly brought up by his sister, often with handouts from the local soup kitchen.
After winning a scholarship, Thomas studied Spanish at the University of Oxford. Plagued by mysterious health problems, terribly poor and depressed, it was only after spending a summer and a term at the end of his second year at Complutense University of Madrid, thanks to a miners' scholarship, that he decided to complete his studies. Thomas was diagnosed at the age of 23 with an undiagnosed thyroid malfunction that had been poisoning him for years, which was operated on to avoid his death.
On graduation and wanting to be a writer, Thomas struggled to establish himself during the 1930s...
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