How Green Was My Valley, first edition cover 1939
How Green Was My Valley (HGWMV) was quite a phenomenon as a novel in 1939, and later as a film directed by John Ford in 1941. The novel kept the author, Richard Llewellyn, in clover. He who once worked as a dishwasher in Claridges Hotel, later lived in a suite at the same hotel after his commercial success.
He claimed to be Welsh, a miner’s son, but inquiry has shown he was born in London to an innkeeper and had no first-hand experience of the life of coal miners. His real name was Vivian Lloyd. What knowledge he had of Welsh miners came from a family who ran a bookshop in London. Their three sons would regale Llewellyn with stories of their father's experiences in a Welsh coal mine. More remarkable even is the fact that it was written in India while the author was stationed there with the British military just before WWII.
Richard Llewellyn did his research, as novelists are meant to do. These days critics look askance at authors or musicians appropriating from cultures other than their own. But this may be shortchanging the imaginative artist who can be from anywhere, but with sufficient gathering of knowledge and study can enter into a different time, a different culture and dwell so long in imagination there that it becomes their own.
The village highlighted in How Green Was My Valley may have been based on Gilfach Goch in southern Wales
Th novel does romanticise the miserable lives which real miners led in those times in the pits, but that is an author’s prerogative to spin a story with imaginative recreation. The factual errors and the varnishing that the author wilfully wrote to make the novel more appealing is documented in this article in The Guardian.
Clearly the story as told attracted the public even if the Welsh miners did not recognise themselves in the novel. It not only charmed the readers who have kept it in print, but it also became a multiple Oscar winning film in 1941. The novel has been translated into scores of languages. The film starred Maureen O'Hara (as Angharad) and a young Roddy McDowell as Huw, and was filmed in Malibu, California. It won six Oscars and was adapted twice for BBC television. A musical was also made.
Maureen O'Hara as Angharad, Walter Pidgeon as the pastor, Mr. Gruffydd
In the modern context of Climate Change, coal is the worst fossil fuel that causes global warming. Where it once was the major source of power generation in UK, new policies such as European Union’s directives for clean air have succeeded in limiting coal to a few percent in terms of power generation in UK. It is as good as dead there although it thrives in markets like India where the percentage of power generation from coal was ~80% in 2021, in China ~64%, and in the United States ~20%.
A brooch, set with a garnet, on a lover's knot of gold – the present that Huw gave Bron
Some of the readers noted the bucolic scenes of nature painted in words by Richard Llewellyn. They make good reading. But all the romances in the novel are ill-fated and presage the unhappy ending. Three sequels followed but none had the success of HGWMV.
Several of the readers were familiar with the novel from their youth, but reading it again decades later made the poignancy of the story and the complexity of the inner lives of the characters stand out. There was humour too and everyone enjoyed the readings and discussions … many thanks to Shobha and Zakia who selected the novel.
Dai Bando and Cyfartha Lewis are appointed to teach Huw how to box
