”You remember Davies? He died, you know..."

"RS Thomas was many things but a barrel of laughs was not one of them. He had a seemingly permanent scowl and foreboding air that, as was often-commented, seemed to fit his thin undertaker-style frame. An ordained Anglican priest, he tended to parishes in the dark interior and storm-lashed peninsulas of Wales, the weather and remoteness matching and amplifying his stern character. He was fond of bird-watching, much less so of human beings. An unapologetic Luddite, he banned electrical appliances from his home and delivered rambling diatribes from his pulpit against such things as televisions, microwave ovens and fridges, all of which he saw as the devil’s work.

His depiction of Wales was never likely to make it into a tourist brochure (his is a country of inbreeding, rotting carrion and endless rain). Yet he proudly counted himself as a nationalist, refusing to vote for Plaid Cymru as they recognised English authority and advocating the burning of holiday homes, whose absentee owners were pricing locals out of existence in their own land. So remarkably contrary was his nature, that it comes almost as an aside that RS Thomas happened to be one of the 20th century’s finest poets."

- RS Thomas, the Clint Eastwood of the Spirit.