D.M. Thomas was born in 1935 in Redruth in Cornwall, the part of England he described in the biographical note to his first major publication as “the sadly haunting, wrecked tin-mining area of West Cornwall, its symbol the square ugly granite harmony-filled Wesleyan chapel”. This suggests two of the crucial factors in his upbringing: his tin-mining ancestry, which is often explored in his poetry, and the Methodist values instilled in him by his parents. A third significant factor is Cornwall's separate status in England, isolated geographically on England's extreme south-west coast and in a strange position culturally, too—a Celtic region in England. Thomas occupies a position as an “outsider” in the English …
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