How Green Was My Valley

Hiraeth is a word in the Welsh language that has no direct translation in English. The word combines several profound emotions, which all refer to a sense of longing and yearning for the past. This pained nostalgia also refers to a place that is forever consigned to the past, to which a person cannot return. Though the word hiraeth is not used in How Green Was My Valley , the sentiment is found throughout the novel and speaks to the cultural tensions between the Welsh and English. Written in the 1930s, the novel looks back to a version of Wales that vanished during the Industrial Revolution. While the small towns in the Welsh valleys were often founded due to their proximity to the coal mines, the changing nature of the mining industry and the exploitative treatment of the Welsh miners by English company owners led to the degradation and eventual abandonment of these communities. Late in the novel, the Home Secretary Winston Churchill sends a delegation of English soldiers and police officers to violently put down the strikes in the Welsh Valleys. This real-life incident is known as the Tonypandy Riots in 1910, the brutality of which led to a continued resentment of English presence in South Wales, a villainization of Winston Churchill, and the gradual degradation of the mining industry in South Wales.