I have written previously (PNR 159) about the Rhys Davies Trust and its principal aim of preserving the memory of an important writer of short stories and novels by supporting Welsh writing and writers in English. The trust was set up in 1990 through the generosity of Rhys Davies's younger brother Lewis, born like him over the shop, a general grocery store at Blaenclydach, barely a mile up a steep hill from Tonypandy, the heart of the Rhondda Fawr, in 1913. Lewis was the last of six children, having two brothers and three sisters to look up to. The eldest of the boys, a youthful flyer in World War I, was killed in action in 1918; the girls grew up strong-minded to the point of domineering, two becoming primary school teachers and the third a hospital matron. Rhys, born in 1901, was determined not to be shackled by home and community. Against his parents' wishes, he left grammar school for employment at the earliest opportunity and soon made his way to London to fulfil his ambition to write. Although he returned to the Rhondda occasionally, usually when short of money, and travelled a little, he lived in or near London, and published there, for the remainder of his life. He was a totally professional, committed writer, and quite prolific, his output including twenty novels and more than a hundred short stories, besides limited forays into non-fiction, biography, drama, autobiography, and numerous articles and reviews for newspapers and journals. Several of his ...