WALES: THE IMAGINARY PLACE

It turns out people profoundly fear the Welsh. According to famous dead British Restaurant critic A.A. Gill, the Welsh are "loquacious, dissemblers, immoral liars, stunted, bigoted, dark, ugly, pugnacious little trolls". As well as "gargoyle-visaged". In this he proved himself perhaps sympathetic to The Times, which in 1866 opined that "all the progress and civilization of Wales has come from England, and a sensible Welshman would direct all his endeavours towards inducing his countrymen to appreciate their neighbours instead of themselves", and "the Welsh language is the curse of Wales. Its prevalence, and the ignorance of English have excluded, and even now exclude, the Welsh people from the civilisation, the improvement, and the material prosperity of their English neighbours".

After reading that one is, perhaps, grateful for different ancestry.

But wait! It gets even better!


"Insanity prevails chiefly amongst the Welsh-speaking population ... "
---The western Mail

"Welsh (is an) appalling and moribund monkey language ... "
---Roger Lewis


[Source for all these quotes: Ten Attacks on Wales.]

What is truly flabberghasting is that A.A. Gill was a restaurant critic. Surely there cannot have been enough of an audience for something like that in all of Britain? And repeating that the fish was overcooked and the chips limp and greasy would have been unsurprising the second or third time, and predictable after the first four reviews.





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