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Remembering Tryweryn

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BBC Radio 4 - Remembering Tryweryn

Guto Harri explores the event that shaped Welsh art and literature for a generation.

Guto Harri explores the event that shaped Welsh art, literature and poetry for a generation.

Guto Harri explores the meaning of two Welsh words daubed on a crumbling stone wall in West Wales, and explores their 50 year journey through Welsh writing and music.

The graffiti on that half collapsed wall, 'Cofiwch Dryweryn' ('Remember Tryweryn'), encapsulates the recent history of the country for many people. They're a memorial to a flooded village: Capel Celyn.

For Wales, the drowning of that village to create a reservoir providing water to Liverpool in the 1960s was a cultural tipping point as well as political one. The words on the memorial have come to symbolise the colonisation and exploitation of Wales by the English.

But why does that one event over any other still have such resonance today?

Hearing from writers, poets, academics and art critics, Guto looks to understand how two words have come to shape Wales today, and how they're used to stir nationalist sentiments.

Produced by Glyn Tansley

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