[This entry was updated by Jeffery A. Triggs (Madison, N.J.) from the entry by W. J. Keith (University of Toronto) in the Concise Dictionary of British Literary Biography, volume 8, pp. 395-405.]

When Rupert Hart-Davis agreed to publish Song at the Year's Turning: Poems 1942-1954 (1955), R. S. Thomas's collection of all his poems that he wished to preserve, it was decided that a well-known poetic figure should be asked to draw attention to the volume, and the services of John Betjeman were enlisted. In his dignified and sensitive introduction Betjeman remarked that "the 'name' which has the honour to introduce this fine poet to a larger public will be forgotten long before that of R. S. Thomas." Betjeman, who has since become poet laureate (as well as Sir John), may have been excessively modest; nonetheless, R. S. Thomas, at that time barely known outside his native Wales, is...