how green was my valley by richard llewellyn

No dates are actually given, but, from references to the Diamond Jubilee and the Boer War, we can tell that it starts off in the late 1890s. However, despite the fact that Huw isn’t a very appealing protagonist, it’s really a very interesting book. Surely the girl and her family would have tried to make him marry her? After that, she’s never mentioned again, and he doesn’t seem to give the baby a second thought.

He doesn’t twig to what’s going on until his sister-in-law tells him that she’s been sent away … hopefully to a place with no chapels. To be fair, he does ask her brother where she’s gone, but he can’t get an answer. The teacher did ask for it, but still! And then Huw’s girlfriend disappears. OK, lads get into playground scraps, but Huw beats up the teacher, so badly that the police get involved. The reason he gets expelled from school is one of the many fights he gets into. It’s a lovely book in many ways, but Huw is really rather annoying. And we hear all about Huw’s schooldays – he’s all set to get a white collar job and escape poverty, but then he gets expelled just before his exams. There are various romances involving Huw’s many siblings, including a love triangle between one of his sisters, the Methodist preacher (who’s actually very nice when he isn’t berating girls in trouble) and one of the mine owners. However, no-one seems to have an issue with the two gay boxers who run one of the local pubs, so at least that’s something. Any young woman unlucky enough to get into trouble is hauled up before the entire congregation and berated for her wickedness – whilst her boyfriend, natch, gets off scot free. On the minus side, the mines are terribly dangerous and fatal accidents are common, wages are low, the community is divided over union membership and strike action, and the tyranny of the chapel is like something out of the Netherlands or Geneva at their most Calvinistic. On the plus side, Huw’s part of a loving family and a close community.

We’ve got a small Welsh mining community, in the late Victorian/early Edwardian era and the story is told, in English but with Welsh idioms/speech patterns, from the viewpoint of a boy called Huw as he grows up. Yes, I know that this book’s over 80 years old, and, yes, I know that it was made into a film during the war, and has been adapted for TV but it was new to me! The Chronicles of Hi… on Malory Towers (Season 4)…įictionFan on Across a Bridge of Dreams by L… Across a Bridge of Dreams by Lesley Downerĭavida Chazan on The King and I – Palace….The King and I – Palace Theatre, Manchester.

How green was my valley by richard llewellyn