"In the very middle of Newtown, under the town's clock tower on the Barclays Bank wall in Severn Street, is a plaque commemorating the short life of Geraint Goodwin (1903 - 41).

'It is a shame that so few people have heard of Geraint Goodwin, not only because he is an important Anglo-Welsh writer who should not be forgotten, but also because he has a great deal to tell us about our town and our countryside as they struggled with the huge changes - social, religious, economic - of the early twentieth century,' laments author-librarian-lecturer Mary Oldham in The Newtonian, the Journal of the Newtown Local History Group (Summer 2008). Her article in the journal is full of the most interesting information about Goodwin as is Sam Adam's monograph in the 'Writers of Wales' series published in 1975 by the University of Wales Press.

I gratefully acknowledge the crucial ground work of both Mary Oldham and Sam Adams but wish to append my observations and comments which might throw some light on the creative process which propelled Goodwin. The Goodwins were Border folk, men of the Marches, who for generations strode the English - Welsh frontier. Although he wrote in English, Geraint himself asserted his identity as uncompromisingly Welsh.

Born in Commercial Street, he always said he was born in Llanllwchaiarn even though it is now in Newtown. Goodwin lost no opportunity to assert his Welsh identity. At the local New Road Boys' Council School he was a bit of a loner and showed no academic ability. Later he was despatched to Towyn County School as a boarder where he had the good fortune of coming under the influence of Mr Davies, his English master. However, on account of his little French and less Latin there was no chance of him getting into university. That certainly would have left him with a sense of failure. Hence at about the age of 17 he secured a job as a trainee reporter with the Montgomeryshire Express. The family had connections with the paper since Geraint's three elder half-brothers were journalists.

Geraint's father Richard, a rate-collector and assistant overseer of the poor, was a respected figure in the Newtown area. He died at the age of 68 when Geraint was only eight. Four years later Geraint's attractive mother Mary Jane married Frank Humphreys, a provision merchant, who was 19 years younger than her. Fortunately for Geraint his step-father took a liking to him and coached him in various country pursuits. This passion for the rural life, instilled by his step-father, was counter poised against the filth and evils of urban living in most of Goodwin's fiction. However, it was his mother - who rather spoilt him - that influenced him most.

Critics have pointed to the uncanny resemblance between D.H. Lawrence (1885 - 1930) and Geraint Goodwin. Not only did they look remarkably alike, and both succumbed to tuberculosis, but their relationship with their mothers was almost identical. Lawrence's first major novel Sons and Lovers (1913) is often cited to be a work dominated by his Oedipus complex though Lawrence dismissed the whole idea as 'vicious half-statements of the Freudians'.

He claimed that he had never read Freud although his wife Frieda later said that she and her husband had discussed Freudian theories. Goodwin's Watch for the Morning (1938) has as its main character a woman called Menna who is based on his mother. The story is set in 'Moreton', clearly Newtown. This is how Menna is graphically described: 'Her strong red hair was plaited and coiled round her head, her mouth was firm and her eyes cold and blue .... Her breasts lifted up the black stuff blouse in a proud curve .... And then, on top of all, she was a beauty.' Later her breasts are described thus: '... her young bosom lifted under her black blouse like two dropped melons.'

Freud had fled Vienna when Hitler invaded Austria. He died in London in 1939. I find it impossible to believe that Goodwin was unaware of some of the psychoanalyst's astounding theories. Sam Adams states that though Watch for the Morning has been overshadowed by The Heyday in the Blood it 'merits far more attention than it generally receives'. The Heyday in the Blood (1936) is Goodwin's best known novel.

The title is heady since it derives from Hamlet, arguably the greatest drama of English literature. Those in the writing trade know too well that a good title is no disadvantage. Set in 'Moreton' and the surrounding area it provides an amazing panorama of the changing socio-economic scene in Mid-Wales and, as always with Goodwin, the clash between the cultures of townies who lived in a 'shovelful of ashes, smouldering and dirty' and the inherited wisdom of people such as Twmi, the landlord of the village public house who truly typifies rural Wales and the conscience of the Welsh people.

I found the demotic of the novel most fascinating. It provides an echo of what one can call 'Welsh English'. But Goodwin goes further. Here is an example of Welsh food. Tatws llaeth was then considered a great treat. 'It was a Welsh dish of new potatoes dropped into a bowl of buttermilk and eaten with a spoon. The potatoes were there, with the skins on them, the steam rising, and a great dish of buttermilk from the dairy was ready to be ladled out.' It is asides such as this that make the book memorable.

The chief protagonist is not Twmi but Beti his daughter. Goodwin has created an iconic and unforgettable character by the sheer power of his imaginative writing. (Coincidentally, 'Beti' in Hindi and Urdu - the two leading languages of South Asia - means 'daughter'). Some of the opening sentences of the novel dazzle the reader with their jewel-like brilliance: 'Beti had gone out to see the kingfisher. She went tripping over the old lawn, her feet sinking into it and with each step there came that strange resilience from the earth; as though she was going to take flight.' And then: 'To run barefoot across the lawn with the dew on it, leaving white footmarks on its glistening front, brought a furtive joy all its own to Beti.'

The Heyday in the Blood was an immediate success. Howard Spring made it his Evening Standard 'Book of the Month' with the following recommendation: 'It has filled me with a curious excitement, with a sense of seeing a great talent trying its first flight, which I have not experienced since reading D.H. Lawrence's The White Peacock in what now seems a distant past.' Spring was the best-selling novelist of O Absalom! (1938), published in the USA and later in the UK as My Son, My Son !. Later he published Fame is the Spur (1940) which told the story of an ambitious Labour politician.

In 1923 Geraint Goodwin had graduated from Wales to Fleet Street and as a reporter on the staff of Allied Newspapers had access to the leading literary figures in London. Being an ambitious boy from distant Wales without an Oxbridge education he decided to cultivate his contacts relentlessly. He audaciously approached the celebrated George Moore, no mean figure at the time, and suggested that he interview him on matters close to Moore's heart. Moore (1873 - 1958) had been Professor of Philosophy at Cambridge from 1925 to 1939 and had influenced the Bloomsbury Group whose leading light was none other than Virginia Woolf. His elder brother was Thomas Sturge Moore, the poet and friend of Yeats. Impressed by the handsome Welshman's charm, Moore surprisingly agreed. The result was Conversations with George Moore (1929) which was published in a limited edition by Ernest Benn, an ancestor of Viscount Stansgate now known globally as Tony Benn. In the book Moore discoursed on subjects as diverse as the problems with Macbeth, the life of the creative artist and women in the world of art. The de luxe edition of 110 copies, signed by both Moore and Goodwin, are now valued collectors' pieces.

The imprimatur which Conversations with George Moore conferred on Goodwin's writing sent his reputation soaring. He knew the likes of Sean O'Casey and corresponded with Charles Morgan and George Bernard Shaw.

However, it was Edward Garnett (1868 - 1937), a man of letters who belonged to a family of litterateurs, who was of immense assistance to him. At the time Garnett was a reader for the firm of Jonathan Cape and had advised authors such as Conrad, Lawrence, Richardson, Forster and Hudson. It was to Garnett that Goodwin dutifully dedicated The Heyday in the Blood. It was, after all, Garnett who mentored Goodwin and told him to abandon ephemeral journalism and to go back to his roots in Wales and devote himself to creative writing there.

In 1939 Goodwin's health deteriorated; his home in Upper Corris was damp and he became weaker and frailer. And so after he was forced to stay in a sanatorium in Talgarth the Goodwins moved to a cottage in Montgomery. There during the last months of his life he was nursed by his devoted wife Rhoda. He died, aged 38, on October 18, 1941.

Geraint Goodwin's novels, short stories, poems and other writings must be republished to make them more accessible. Mary Oldham writes, 'Geraint Goodwin's novels and short stories have bequeathed to us a vivid, moving and unsparing picture of early twentieth century Newtown and the surrounding countryside. He deserves to be remembered as one of the great literary figures of our town's history.'

The last stirring words must of course come from Geraint Goodwin himself: Like Peer Gynt, for all my backslidings, I have been true to the genius of my country; not to my country you understand, but to the genius of my country."

Article written by Reg Massey which first appeared in PenCambria No.9 Winter 2008

Geraint Goodwin's books

Conversations with George Moore, Ernest Benn, London, 1929
Call Back Yesterday, Cape, London, 1935
The Heyday in the Blood, Cape, London, 1936 / Penguin, London, 1954
The White Farm and Other Stories, Cape, London, 1937
Watch for the Morning, Cape, London, 1938
Come Michaelmas, Cape, London, 1936