Alexander Cordell shortly before his death in 1997
I discovered this interesting article from Carolyn Hitt about one of my literary heroes -- Alexander Cordell. I knew that his books had sold in their millions, but I had not realised that the literary establishment in Wales had shunned him -- just as it has attempted to ignore other Welsh best-selling authors including Iris Gower and Catrin Collier.
Yes, his writing style was rather peculiar. We might call it rough and even muscular, but it had great vitality and appeal. His characters were rough and ready too, and not at all multi-dimentional. But he knew how to spin a good yarn and how to grab the reader's attention. One reason maybe why "the establishment" never warmed to him was his very strong socialist message and his portrayal of the class struggle. He did have a tendency to portray the working class as heroes and the gentry as evil bastards -- and life is generally a bit more nuanced than that. Maybe that is why his books have never been adapted for the small or large screen whereas Poldark has -- more than once.
Anyway, as far as I am concerned, having read all of his Welsh books more than once, I think he deserves a place among the Welsh literary greats........
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Wales Online / Western Mail
https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/news-opinion/carolyn-hitt-walking-footsteps-one-7954444
An email arrived this week which underlined how Wales – like Patagonia – has the perfect cultural landscape to walk in the footsteps of writers or trace a path through our heritage. The email was from Chris Barber, the literary agent responsible for the works of Alexander Cordell. And arguably nowhere more than Cordell Country are the hills alive with historical fact and fiction.
Chris was expressing his disappointment that Cordell’s centenary year has been more or less forgotten. But just as Gwyn Thomas languished in the shadow of R S Thomas last year on their respective centenaries, so no-one else is going to get a literary look-in while Dylan Thomas is omnipresent through 2014.
Cordell, of course, will never attract the critical kudos that Dylan Thomas enjoys. But it is sheer snobbery to ignore the spectacular popularity and success his work achieved. As Chris points out, Rape of the Fair Country – part of Cordell’s trilogy about life in early industrial Wales – is “probably just as famous as Under Milk Wood.”
It sold a staggering two million copies when first published in 1959 and was translated into 17 languages. Yet the response of the literary establishment was summed up crisply by Meic Stephens in the opening line of the obituary he wrote following Cordell’s death in 1997.
“Alexander Cordell was a popular writer whose novels were read by people who do not usually read novels,” wrote Stephens.
He goes on to explain how Cordell’s populism protected him from academic detractors.
“He wrote 28 of them, mainly historical romances which came perilously close, in the view of some critics, to bodice-rippers but which, for his many admirers, were exciting and well-researched yarns with a good deal of contemporary social significance. Opinion divides sharply over their literary merit, a consideration to which the author always declared himself deeply indifferent, preferring to point to their large sales in both Britain and the United States and the esteem in which he was held by that most genial section of the book-buying public, the common reader.”
If Cordell catered for the “common reader” he was also perhaps the Welsh working class’ most unlikely champion. Here was a man raised in a starchy military family in colonial Ceylon portraying the struggles of life for marginalised men and women in the old iron towns of Blaenavon, Ebbw Vale and Tredegar.
His passion for the landscape that formed the cradle of the Industrial Revolution in Wales developed when he settled in Abergavenny in 1950 to work as a quantity surveyor in the western valleys of Monmouthshire.
Cordell’s historical novels reflect the radical politics of the Chartist movement, the hardship of the workers and their families and the spirit that bonded Welsh industrial communities in times of adversity. Though his fiction was layered with romantic colour and dialogue that could grate on the Welsh idiom front, his factual research relied on impressive primary source information.
Conducting interviews with local Blaenavon residents in the 1950s, he talked to people who had been born in the 1870s and were thus able to relate the iron-making stories of their forefathers. As their narratives unfolded in conversations in The Rolling Mill pub, Cordell’s imagination took flight. In his introduction to Rape of the Fair Country, he describes how the “old people’s tales of Blaenavon breathed life” into the book.
“I wrote the book at white heat, scarcely altering a chapter,” he explains. “In between spells of writing I studied at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth and befriended every available librarian. I suddenly discovered that hand in hand with the tale of the mountain town went the last bloody revolution in Britain, the Chartist Rebellion, when men like John Frost a hundred years before their time, fought and suffered for the Six Point Charter – five of which we enjoy today in freedom.”
Cordell wrote 30 books in all, finding inspiration in other rich seams of Welsh history – The Fire People explores the Merthyr Rising and the martyrdom of Dic Penderyn while the Tonypandy Riots form the backdrop for The Sweet And Bitter Earth.
Cordell met a lonely and initially mysterious death.
Eight days after being reported missing in November 1997, his body was found on the Horseshoe Pass outside Llangollen. Suffering from depression after the passing of his second wife Donnie, he had gone to this bleak spot carrying a half-consumed bottle of Napoleon brandy, sleeping pills and a photograph of each of his late wives.
Yet while suicide was at first assumed, it emerged that Cordell had actually died of a heart attack. He is buried in Llanfoist, at the core of the industrial landscape he loved so much.
Chris Barber, who knew Cordell personally and helped him research some of his books, is keen to keep his legacy alive, particularly in this, his centenary year.
“He was one of the most influential writers of his generation and his books helped put the Industrial Revolution into a context that ordinary people could understand,” says Chris. “He undoubtedly deserves widespread recognition for his literary achievements.”
Hodder & Stoughton have celebrated Cordell’s centenary by publishing all 30 of his novels in ebook format while Matt Addis, a Blaenavon-born actor currently appearing in War Horse, is releasing audio books of Cordell’s first trilogy plus This Proud and Savage Land.
In September, Chris hosted a Cordell tribute night in Abergavenny attended by the late novelist’s daughter Georgina Korhonen and her family, who flew over from their home in Finland. Georgina later opened a Cordell Exhibition at Pontypool Museum which will run for the next five months while there are also plans for Usk’s Gallery In The Square to host a display of Cordell-inspired artwork next month.
For Chris, however, the ultimate tribute would be a screen adaptation of Rape of the Fair Country.
“This dramatic and moving novel has all the ingredients to make a very exciting film or television series and I am pleased to say that some progress has been made towards making this happen,” he says.
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