On Being a Writer in Wales: Steve Blandford

Steve Blandford

A generous offer to write about this of course. Impossible to turn down. But full of bear traps. I have been a writer of some kind since the early 1980s. A writer living and working in Wales since 1990. Is that enough to understand and therefore genuinely call myself a ‘writer in Wales’?

At first it felt like, if not plain sailing, then at least things were happening. Stage plays at first. Usually, good enough reviews in Edinburgh and the like. Guilty thrill that The Guardian or The Independent would come and write something. Forever hustling for attention of some sort – audiences, reviewers, potential agents.

Suddenly shortlisted for a national competition – the now defunct Radio Times award. A screen play called The Day I Played Against Imran Khan. Then an agent and a BBC commission. I asked my agent at what point you could consider giving up the day job – the answer was to take the income from your best year as a writer, divide it by ten and ask yourself if you could live on it. 

It was good while it lasted, but it didn’t take long to answer the question.

Screenplays, even theatre plays need lots of people to agree to collaborate with you and they take forever to get off the ground. Secretly, I really wanted to write a novel. My job meant I needed to write about others which of course could also be enjoyable.

It was the critical work that really made me begin to properly think about being a writer in Wales. In fact, about making cultural work in any ‘small nation’. Especially when the UK was thinking seriously again about becoming several small nations. I once wrote a book called Film, Drama and the Break-Up of Britain.

Devolution did feel properly exciting. So did the work that was now coming out of Wales, Scotland and both parts of Ireland. Writers and directors reimagining their nations. By then I felt like a bystander, but one with a job that afforded the luxury of, at least, commenting on all this.

But the itch never quite goes away and finally, in the 2010s I squeezed a novel out. Iant. Ultra Welsh in a way that surprised me. Based on the first language, Welsh speaking half of my family, from the north. Stories of a grandfather who died when I was two years old and part of the unluckiest generation in history. A life consumed by two world wars. Brought up in the back of beyond and sent to fight in countries that he had barely heard of. Part blinded but surviving to come back and live a life on the railways appreciating the peace of Merionethshire and latterly rural Shropshire.

Now the second novel, about to appear in print and begun as the endless fight over the aftermath of Brexit took hold. Took hold here in Wales in ways that perhaps should have been predictable but was a shock to me at least.

On the one hand a nation of sanctuary, rich in artists celebrating one of the oldest multicultural communities in Britain. On the other, a rejection of Europe, a toehold in elected politics for UKIP and a base for even darker forces on the international right.

Lone Wolves attempts to be a story of that time as its two central characters try to negotiate a darkening world that has arrived at the door of a nation traditionally so rooted in ideas of community and welcome.

Lone Wolves is also a love story of sorts. People finding ways to muddle through and sometimes discovering moments of real happiness amidst the wave of violence that has emerged around them.

During research for the book it was a shock, probably rooted in naivety, to find how much far-right activity there was in Wales. Of course, there are also large numbers of people dedicated to combating that. It was important to remember this as the research took me to some dark places.

Overall, it has been a privilege to live and work in Wales for thirty-six years. I have met and worked alongside people whose base here has given them a unique take on the world. Writers, directors, poets, novelists, academics, dancers and visual artists. Amongst the latter is my daughter Beth whose work as an illustrator is a real inspiration to me. To have her design the covers for both Iant and now Lone Wolves has been such a privilege. A small collaboration, but one that I will always cherish.