occupying new territory the screen,|andmarvel more and more at the bad acting’.^16 He employs similar
imagery in ‘Blaen Cwm Gwdi’, which refers to ‘a flaw|in the grey actors’ fluent
speech’.^17 Years later he would recall this period in unambiguous terms:
There was cause enough for us to protest and rebel when I was a youth, more so than
in any other period, because the years between the two world wars signified one of the
most shameless and turbulent periods that we had witnessed in our history. These were
years of wide-scale economic recession with thousands of unemployed people suffering
indescribable poverty and adversity, and the governments in power among the most weak
and ineffective and despicable in their foreign and domestic policies that had tormented any
country, no-one in authority showed they had the faintest idea how to manage things, and
some were profiting barefacedly from the wretchedness.^18
‘It had come at last’ was how Llywelyn-Williams refers in his autobiography to
Chamberlain’s long-awaited announcement on 3 September 1939 that Britain had
declared war on Germany.^19 Relocated from Cardiff to London, he was placed near
the very centre of things: as John Davies commented, ‘In 1940, London was the
place to be, and clearly the Welsh broadcasters enjoyed themselves hugely.’^20 So
Llywelyn-Williams was presented with a rare opportunity to record the mood and
condition of the wartime capital; he did so in nine poems written during the year
that he spent there, the period of the Phoney War that came to a head with the
Battle of Britain between July and October 1940.
In ‘Here in the Tranquil Fields’ Llywelyn-Williams strikes a rather idealized note
as he refers to the War:
No use being angry at the interfering,
at the rush of the war’s machines;
the corrupt society is ending, ending,
and the sorrow and sadness is the accompaniment, and the final sigh.^21‘I believed that the society was corrupt and the sooner it was destroyed the better
and men provided with an opportunity to build a better city in its place’^22 —that
is how Llywelyn-Williams summed up his feelings, in retrospect. This was a war to
purge the old contaminated world, the long-expected conclusion to what Auden
famously called a ‘low dishonest decade’.^23 The same conviction, that war would
improve matters, prevails in ‘The World that Vexes Us’—‘the trial will strengthen
(^16) Llywelyn-Williams, ‘Lounge on the Hill’, trans. Clancy, ibid. 118.
(^17) Llywelyn-Williams, ‘Blaen Cwm Gwdi’, trans. Clancy, ibid. 129.
(^18) Llywelyn-Williams, ‘Holi: Alun Llywelyn-Williams’, in Gwyn Thomas (ed.),Mabon, 4 (1971),
17–18. 19
Llywelyn-Williams,Gwanwyn yn y Ddinas, 160.
(^20) John Davies,Broadcasting and the BBC in Wales, 129.
(^21) Llywelyn-Williams, ‘Here in the Tranquil Fields’, trans. Clancy, inLight in the Gloom, 120.
(^22) Llywelyn-Williams, ‘Holi: Alun Llywelyn-Williams’, 18.
(^23) W. H. Auden, ‘September 1, 1939’, inEnglish Auden: Poems, Essays and Dramatic Writings
1927–1939, ed. Edward Mendelson (London: Faber, 1977), 245.