D. M. Thomas

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 nov