1 MARCH 2008, Page 23

Celtic cringe

Sir: Molly Watson (Style & travel, 23 February) begins by saying ‘Dylan Thomas used to say that a day away from Wales was a day wasted.’ Was this the same Dylan Thomas who said ‘Wales is the Land of my Fathers. And my fathers can have it’? Perhaps he meant that a day away from Wales is a day wasted, when one could instead have a week, a month, a year or a lifetime away? In this he seems merely to have been following in the great tradition of Celtic poets and writers such as James Joyce, who preferred voluntary exile to living in their rain-sodden native lands.

Ian Rippey

Northern Ireland