Alun Lewis - Life and Work

Life and Work

Alun Lewis was born on 1 July 1915 at Cwmaman, near Aberdare in Cynon Valley in the South Wales Coalfield. His father was a school teacher; and he had a younger sister, Mair. By the time he attended Cowbridge Grammar School, he was already interested in writing. He went on to study at Aberystwyth University and the University of Manchester.

Lewis was unsuccessful as a journalist, and instead earned his living as a supply teacher. He met the poet Lynette Roberts (whose poem "Llanybri" is an invitation to him to visit her home), but she was married to another poet, Keidrych Rhys. In 1939 Lewis met Gweno Ellis, a teacher, whom he married in 1941.

After the outbreak of the Second World War Lewis joined the British army, although he inclined to pacifism. In 1941 he collaborated with artists John Petts and Brenda Chamberlain on the "Caseg broadsheets". His first published book was a volume of short stories, The Last Inspection (1942). This was followed by Raider's Dawn and other poems (1942) (in which he makes a reference to Saints Peter and Paul). In 1942 he was sent to India with the South Wales Borderers.

Lewis died on 5 March 1944 in Burma, in the course of the campaign against the Japanese. He was found shot in the head, after shaving and washing, near the officers' latrines, with his revolver in his hand, and died from the wound six hours later. Despite a suggestion of suicide, an army court of inquiry concluded that he had tripped and that the shooting was an accident.

His second book of poems, Ha!Ha! among the trumpets. Poems in transit, was published in 1945, and his Letters from India in 1946. Several collections of his poems, letters and stories have been published subsequently.