I can't remember reading such an out-right entertaining biography before (not that I've read a large number) and certainly never one so funny which is a bit surprising considering the subject, a man many found forbidding, even a little scary. Yet Rogers finds the genuine comedy in the man's life as well as the humour Thomas displayed to the people who could get past the facade to the human underneath.

It seems like Thomas found it very difficult to express his emotions in any way other than through his poetry. This caused many problems, leaving his only child extremely bitter, for instance, and alienating many who he could not engage with on an intellectual front. Yet many of his parishioners found him endlessly patient and considerate in times of trouble, illness or bereavement. And so it goes on, developing a picture of a compicated man, full of contradictions, in search of something he never really found, that he probably couldn't name. Perhaps closest to it when bird watching, alone in a wild space.

Rogers, who knew Thomas, also offers helpful insight into the poetry and the social context of Wales in Thomas's lifetime, necessary to anything but a superficial understanding of the man. I strongly recommend that anyone interested in R.S. Thomas, the man or the poet, read this - it won't be a chore. ( )

It is interesting to compare this biography with Yates and Chester’s The Troublemaker, further down my list. Both Scott and Thomas were ‘difficult’ men, churchmen of the same generation whose lives developed unconventionally, in different directions. In Scott’s case, the biographers are defeated by their subject partly because they take a conventional approach to an unconventional man. Byron Rogers’ approach to his subject is deeply engaged, convincing and often very funny. The subjective, impressionistic approach is sometimes confusing in its facts and chronology, but this is appropriate for the "Ogre of Wales", a man referred to by fellow curmudgeon Philip Larkin in a letter as “our friend Arsewipe Thomas” (146). Highly recommended.

It is interesting to compare this biography with Yates and Chester’s The Troublemaker, further down my list. Both Scott and Thomas were ‘difficult’ men, churchmen of the same generation whose lives developed unconventionally, in different directions. In Scott’s case, the biographers are defeated by their subject partly because they take a conventional approach to an unconventional man. Byron Rogers’ approach to his subject is deeply engaged, convincing and often very funny. The subjective, impressionistic approach is sometimes confusing in its facts and chronology, but this is appropriate for the "Ogre of Wales", a man referred to by fellow curmudgeon Philip Larkin in a letter as “our friend Arsewipe Thomas” (146). Highly recommended.

When Byron Rogers, as yet unsure if he would write this book, asked Thomas's son Gwydion for his father's 'papers', he was presented with an assortment of bags and envelopes containing items such as 'the skull of a hare ... a puffins beak ... snow bunting feathers ... an adders skin ... a single dead prawn'. Rogers records that it was the discovery of this strange, poignant archive that decided events - he would write a life of R.S. Thomas. In turn, it is Roger's account of R.S. and Elsi Thomas's gothic collection of animal parts that has enticed me to read this insightful and deliciously funny book. And to return to Thomas's poems for the first time in a long time. ( )