R. S. Thomas was born at 5 Newfoundland Road,
Gabalfa,
Llandaff, Cardiff as the only child of Margaret (née Davies) and Thomas Hubert Thomas. The family moved to
Holyhead in 1918 because of his father's work in the
Merchant Navy. He was awarded a bursary in 1932 to study at the
University College of North Wales, where he read
Latin. In 1936, after he completed his theological training at
St Michael's College, Llandaff, he was ordained as a priest in the Anglican
Church in Wales. From 1936 to 1940 he was the curate of
Chirk, Denbighshire, where he met his future wife,
Mildred "Elsi" Eldridge, an English artist. He subsequently became curate-in charge of
Tallarn Green,
Flintshire, as part of his duties as curate of
Hanmer, Wrexham. In Hanmer he was an assistant to the Rev. Thomas Meredith-Morris, grandfather of the writer
Lorna Sage, a fact later described by
Byron Rogers as a "crossing of paths of two of Wales's strangest clergymen". Whilst Sage devotes a great deal of her autobiography
Bad Blood to her late relative, she does not mention Thomas, who was in any case in Hanmer before Sage was born. However, her memoir gives some insight into the strange environment in which Thomas worked as a young priest. Thomas never wrote much about his curacies and nothing is known of the relationship between him and Meredith-Morris. Thomas and Eldridge were married in 1940 and remained together until her death in 1991. Their son, (Andreas) Gwydion, was born on 29 August 1945 and died on 15 September 2016. The Thomas family lived on a tiny income and lacked the comforts of modern life, largely through their own choice. One of the few household amenities the family ever owned, a vacuum cleaner, was rejected because Thomas decided it was too noisy. From 1942 to 1954 Thomas was rector of
St Michael's Church, Manafon, near
Welshpool in rural
Montgomeryshire. During his time there he began to study Welsh and published his first three volumes of poetry,
The Stones of the Field (1946),
An Acre of Land (1952) and
The Minister (1953). Thomas's poetry achieved a breakthrough with the publication in 1955 of his fourth book, ''Song at the Year's Turning'', in effect a collected edition of his first three volumes. This was critically well received and opened with an introduction by Betjeman. His position was also helped by winning the
Royal Society of Literature's Heinemann Award. in
Aberdaron where Thomas was vicar from 1967 to 1978 Thomas learnt the Welsh language from the age of 30, into "a tiny, unheated cottage in one of the most beautiful parts of Wales, where, however, the temperature sometimes dipped below freezing," according to
Theodore Dalrymple. Thomas was nominated for the 1996
Nobel Prize in Literature, the winner of which was
Wislawa Szymborska. He received the 1996
Lannan Literary Award for Lifetime Achievement. Thomas died on 25 September 2000 aged 87, at his home in Pentrefelin near
Criccieth, survived by his second wife, Elizabeth Vernon. A memorial event celebrating his life and poetry was held at
Westminster Abbey with readings from Heaney,
Andrew Motion,
Gillian Clarke and
John Burnside. Thomas's ashes are buried near the door of St John's Church,
Porthmadog, Gwynedd. ==Beliefs and contribution to spirituality==