Huw Menai

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Huw Owen Williams (13 July 1886 – 28 June 1961), who wrote as Huw Menai, was a

Welsh Assembly Government
.

Biography

Huw Menai was born in

Ragged School in Caernarfon, and left school aged twelve, later becoming a miner at Gilfach Goch. He married Anne Jones in 1910; they had three sons and five daughters.[2]

Having moved to Merthyr Vale, where his father was working, he became politically active and wrote for socialist publications, until promotion forced him to take the employer's side. During the

Wil Ifan, John Cowper Powys, and Raymond Garlick. He was not a Modernist, but had been taught Wordsworth at school and was heavily influenced by Romanticism, an influence shown in poems such as "The Passing of Guto", which was praised by T. S. Eliot.[3] He admitted to having been brought up on Palgrave's Golden Treasury, and his character "Alf" represents an Everyman.[4] His work has been compared with that of Idris Davies, but Meic Stephens says that Huw Menai "lacks the power and passion" of Davies.[5]

He eventually moved to Penygraig, and often faced hardship, receiving a civil list pension from 1949, thanks to the intervention of the Port Talbot Forum.[6]

One of his sons, Alun Menai Williams, was an army medic and a prominent anti-Fascist campaigner who joined the

International Brigade and fought in the Spanish Civil War.[7]

Works

  • Through the Upcast Shaft (1920)
  • The Passing of Guto (1927)
  • Back in Return (1933)
  • The Simple Vision (1945)

References

  1. ^ a b Roberts Jones, Sally (2001). "Huw Owen Williams". Dictionary of Welsh Biography. National Library of Wales. Retrieved 9 April 2016.
  2. ^ Pine, L. G. (1960). The Author's and Writer's Who's Who.
  3. ISBN 9780300188899
    .
  4. ISBN 9781443848862
    .
  5. ISBN 9781848397224
    .
  6. ^ "no title". The Transactions of the Port Talbot Historical Society. II (i). Port Talbot Historical Society: 68. {{cite journal}}: Cite uses generic title (help)
  7. ^ Heath, Tony (18 July 2006). "Obituary:Alun Menai Williams". The Guardian. Retrieved 9 April 2016.
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