Though it in no measure dilutes the implacable hostility I feel towards the small seaside town I live in, I was intrigued to discover in Stefan Collini's review in the latest London Review of Books of Dai Smith's life of Williams that he lived here while an adult education tutor after the war. This is more interesting than the people one finds through a keyword search of the Dictionary of National Biography which, apart from the corrupt MPS who have sat for the constituency, finds those who were educated here when it was the prep school capital of the south coats, and those who died in the town's many nursing homes.
Collini describes some of Williams writing as thin. That is the abiding memory I have too; I always suspected the vogue for his work owed much to the attraction of his position as a safely unattached leftist, free from the vulgar necessity of political action.
Smith, Dai
Raymond Williams: a warrior's tale
Parthian Books: 2008
