“Wales needs to get over England and be Wales again”

Your programme Wales: A Twentieth-Century Tragedy explores what you frame as the decline of Wales over the past 100 years. Why do you describe it as a “tragedy”?

I think what I mean by this rather controversial title is that Wales – which is the land of my father – was, through much of its history, right back to the Middle Ages, a very prosperous part of the British Isles. It had extraordinary natural resources throughout the 20th century and benefited from them. It was far less poor than Ireland and Scotland, or much of the north and west of England. It had sheep, fertile valleys and uplands; it supplied England with milk. It also had slate, iron, lead, zinc, all these minerals, which it exploited successfully. And then coal. It had a very lively fabric industry and a lot of tourism, it was a beautiful place. Nothing in Wales, with the possible exception of the coal, needed to collapse. Why is it not that way today? That’s what fascinates me.

Why was coal so important to Wales at the beginning of the 20th century?

The entire world needed coal. It was simply