Byron Rogers' two previous biographies (J. L. Carr and R. S. Thomas) have been real critical and sales successes. Now Byron tackles, in his own idiosyncratic and compulsively readable way, a third biographical subject: himself.

Mae dau fywgraffiad blaenorol Byron Rogers (sef bywgraffiadau o J. L. Carr ac R. S. Thomas) wedi bod yn llwyddiannau mawr. Y tro hwn, mae Byron Rogers yn defnyddio'i ddawn i ysgrifennu trydydd bywgraffiad - ei fywgraffiad ef ei hun.

Well, this is a curious book. A delightfully, deliciously curious book. But what else would one expect from the man who broke many of the rules of conventional biography to give genuine humanity to that glowering giant of Welsh poetry in English, R. S. Thomas? It was Rogers who looked beyond the poetry and the politics to cast a gentle light on the personal in his much-acclaimed biography. Together with Claire Tomalin’s biography of Pepys and Rosemary Hill’s of Pugin, Rogers’ The Man Who Went Into the West: The Life of R. S. Thomas has helped to give life writing a much-needed makeover, turning it from the drily factual provision of information into an exhilarating and entertaining new form.

Me: the Authorised Biography is a similarly pleasurable read, with the spotlight cast this time on Rogers himself, to a degree. The chapters covering his childhood and youth, up to the age of seventeen, are warm and intimate and give a strong sense of Rogers’ profound love of his parents and the land he grew up in, whatever their flaws and failings. (He is endlessly tolerant of his mother’s quirky ways, though less forgiving of the self-righteous hypocrisies of strict Methodism and bullying teachers – things he trustingly believes to be a thing of the past.)

The sense of intimacy wanes in the chapters covering Rogers’ adult life and there is a period of about five years, covering his late teens and early twenties, that are intriguingly omitted, so that the reader is teleported forward to the beginning of his career as a journalist. From here on, the autobiography becomes a series of glorious – and sometimes painful – anecdotes and observations that shift the focus away from Rogers himself and on to the people in his life. But this is simply another way of revealing the self, though more obliquely, through relationships with others. Just as I will always remember Joan Jones, Byron Hopkins and all the other people of Eglwys-fach through whose eyes we see R. S. Thomas in The Man Who Went Into the West, so shall I always remember Tom O’Shea, Bobby Danes and the other denizens of the Old Red Lion, whose stories and banter speak to me not just of them but of the man who chooses to record and immortalise them in his autobiography. Sorry, biography. Rogers is shapeshifting conventional forms again.

Suzy Ceulan Hughes

It is possible to use this review for promotional purposes, but the following acknowledgment should be included: A review from www.gwales.com, with the permission of the Welsh Books Council.

Gellir defnyddio'r adolygiad hwn at bwrpas hybu, ond gofynnir i chi gynnwys y gydnabyddiaeth ganlynol: Adolygiad oddi ar www.gwales.com, trwy ganiatâd Cyngor Llyfrau Cymru.