Alun Lewis

Alun Lewis (1915 – 1944), was born in Cwmaman, a South Wales mining village, where his father was a school teacher and his three brothers worked in the mines. An early aptitude for writing inspired him in his vocation to be a poet and writer.

Lewis was educated at Cowbridge Grammar School and at the University of Aberystwyth, Wales. He went on to postgraduate studies at Manchester University and then became a teacher. His early attempts at journalism were unsuccesful.

Alun Lewis admired and was influenced by the work of the Welsh poet, Edward Thomas. Lewis' published his first collection of poems in 1942, entltled Raider’s Dawn and Other Poems, and his reputation as a war poet was established. He describes military life and its isolation, the impact of his travels in the Forces. A volume of short stories, The Last Inspection, was also published in 1942, and showed that he was equally skilled as a prose writer.

Despite his pacifism he enlisted in the Royal Engineers in 1940, and in 1942 was sent to India; then in 1944 to the Burmese front. On his way, at Arakan in Lower Burma, he was killed in a mysterious incident involving his own pistol. Declared an accident, the possibility of suicide can’t be dismissed.

Alun Lewis’s second book of poems, Ha! Ha! Among the Trumpets, was published after his death in 1945

Alun Lewis married Gweno Ellis in 1941 and his love poetry is addressed to her.