Saunders Lewis

Saunders Lewis
Saunders Lewis as an army officer in 1916
President of Plaid Cymru
In office 1926–1939
Preceded by	Lewis Valentine
Succeeded by	John Edward Daniel
Personal details
Born	John Saunders Lewis 15 October 1893 Wallasey, Cheshire, England
Died	1 September 1985(1985-09-01) (aged 91) Cardiff, Wales
Political party	Plaid Cymru
Spouse	Margaret Gilcriest ​ ​ (m. 1924; died 1984)​
Children	1
Alma mater	University of Liverpool

Saunders Lewis (born John Saunders Lewis; 15 October 1893 – 1 September 1985) was a Welsh politician, poet, dramatist, Medievalist, and literary critic. Born into a Welsh-speaking ministerial family in Greater Liverpool, Lewis studied in a public school growing up. He rediscovered the importance of both his heritage language and cultural roots while serving as a junior officer in the British Army during the trenches of the First World War. As a vocal supporter of Welsh nationalism, Lewis believed, however, that heritage language revival, cultural nationalism and the decolonisation of Welsh-language literature, the dramatic arts, and culture needed to precede Welsh devolution or political independence. If the excessive Anglophilia and colonial mentality traditionally known as Dic Siôn Dafydd was never challenged or defeated, Lewis predicted in 1918, "the Welsh Parliament would [only] be an enlarged County Council."^[1]

Lewis accordingly became a co-founder of Plaid Genedlaethol Cymru (The National Party of Wales), now the Welsh nationalist political party known as Plaid Cymru, at a covert meeting with fellow nationalists during the 1925 National Eisteddfod of Wales. Lewis has been described by Jan Morris as, "the most passionate of twentieth century Welsh patriots",^[2] and as being, "one of the few twentieth century writers in Welsh with a European reputation, but for many Welshmen [he was] chiefly the keeper of the national conscience."^[3] Lewis is usually acknowledged as one of the most vitally important figures in 20th-century Welsh-language literature. He is also widely credited, through his 1962 radio address Tynged yr Iaith ("The Fate of the Language"), with almost singlehandedly bringing Welsh back from the brink of language death.

In 1970, Lewis was nominated for a Nobel Prize in Literature and was appointed as a Knight Commander of the Order of St Gregory by Pope Paul VI. Saunders Lewis' traditionalist Catholic and distributist beliefs gave him a simultaneously anti-Marxist and anti-colonialist interpretation of Welsh history and a similar vision, influenced by his study of what had he considered to have worked in Irish nationalism, for the future of the Welsh people. In the 21st century, he continues, for this reason to be the target of posthumous attacks by far left politicians from the very party he helped to found. Even so, Lewis was overwhelmingly voted the tenth greatest Welsh hero in the '100 Welsh Heroes' poll, released on St. David's Day 2004.^[4]