WHY WALES? David Penny
Even though I have spent the majority of my later life living in England I still, and always will, define myself as Welsh. Some may consider it strange that I do so because I was actually born in London. However, my mother detested the big city so much she dragged my father back to Welshpool and the arms of her extended family when I was a mere six months old. And in Wales I stayed until I was forty. (If, that is, one can call Welshpool a true part of Wales. But it is a mile or two inside the border.)
As I write this post I am, once again, in Wales. This time on holiday in the true heartland around Porthmadog, where the villages and towns use Welsh as their first language.
I have posted elsewhere about why I write, but this time I want to talk about how Wales, its culture and, in particular, its people and landscapes, has influenced how I write and what I write about.
This may seem strange if you look at my books, because currently none are actually set in Wales (though my modern police procedural, The Murder Trail, was always going to be set in Mid Wales when the idea first came to me 20 years ago. Then it changed. Not once, but several times. Currently I’m thinking, before I write the rest of the series, whether I shouldn’t return it to my homeland. We’ll see…
However, what this post is about isn’t the location, but that culture I mentioned before. And, in particular, what I believe is a sense of otherness about the place. This includes the landscape, which rises slowly in some places, and all at once in others, to rear up into a surfeit of hills and mountains, of crags, scree, slate spoil and coal tips. It is a landscape all its own and belongs to us who identify as Welsh.
It also contributes to that sense of otherness I associate with being Welsh. We were the subjugated nation, our own culture supressed but never destroyed. It is this sense of otherness I carry through to my writing. My primary series has an outsider, Thomas Berrington, who initially has left his homeland to make a new place in southern Spain. There he is extraño – a stranger. But one who slowly learns the language and mores of his new homeland. But Thomas never forgets his roots, so eventually he returns to England (pause for those who wish to spit to one side).
He was, and even after his return, an outsider. An other. It is this which I carry inside me, barely aware of it until I need to dig deep for inspiration for a story. To tap into the culture that raised me and which lives within me. It influences creativity, and the willingness to accept that otherness into my stories.
Cymru am byth!
Crime Cymru 