John Pikoulis

Alun, Gweno and Freda is a radical reworking of John Pikoulis’s classic biography, Alun Lewis: A Life (Seren, 1984) with new material which sheds further light on the greatest writer of the Second World War, Alun Lewis (1915-1944). Born in the impoverished industrial valleys of south Wales, the story of Lewis has many varied aspects – he was a talented academic, a gifted writer, a depressive personality, politically aspirational in left wing terms, a pacifist by nature who was faced with a war against fascism. In the course of the war he became caught between two women on opposite sides of the world, his wife Gweno and Freda Aykroyd, an ex patriot in India whose house provided respite for officers on leave there. Lewis’s relationships with Gweno and Freda informed his poetry but also contributed to an inevitable emotional turmoil. He died in mysterious circumstances on active service in Burma: was his death an accident or suicide? And did his triangular relationship with Gweno and Freda contribute to the ending of his life? Essentially the story of Lewis’s short and sometimes tortured life, the book is also the story about how it was written. It quotes extensively from interviews with and correspondence from the main players in the story, and explores the sometimes difficult and delicate territories to be negotiated by the biographer as a story unfolds.

Alun Lewis (1915-1944) is one of the most impressive and important writers of the 20th century. The leading author of World War Two, perhaps the leading poet, he is still an influential figure, particularly in his native Wales. In this new and revised edition of his biography John Pikoulis draws on unpublished material and Lewis's now extensively available work to present a portrait of the man: passionate, thoughtful, serious with an often romantic nature. From his childhood days in the depressed valleys of south Wales, Lewis felt he had a vocation to be a writer. Pikoulis traces Lewis's development from the remarkable schoolboy stories written as an unhappy boarder, through his university education at Aberystwyth and Manchester to his return to the valleys as a teacher. His extended treatment of Lewis's military service, especially in India and Burma (where he was to die aged twenty-eight), reflects his standing as a war writer. Lewis's poems and stories, authentic and moving, were popular with both readers and critics, catching the tone of the 'phoney war' years and later the disturbing but exciting experience of his war in India. His vivid letters home, which have been compared to Keats's letters, capture both the atmosphere of war and the essence of Lewis's character, and Pikoulis draws on them, and on contemporary photographs, to portray a fascinating man and writer. Dr. John Pikoulis is a lecturer in the Department of Continuing Studies at Cardiff University. His other books include a critical study of William Faulkner.