Jan Morris

Mocking the Welsh is the last permitted bigotry

On the eve of the Eisteddfod, Jan Morris says that, much as the English might enjoy their personal experiences of Wales, ancient suspicion of their neighbours always kicks in

issue 25 July 2009

‘Don’t let’s be beastly to the Germans’ went a sarcastic lyric of Nöel Coward’s at the end of the second world war, and nowadays nobody of civilised instinct is beastly to them. Quite right too. Political correctness, so often stultifying to free expression, has at least ensured that racial bigotry is recognised as the cruellest kind of yobbery, distantly but recognisably related to genocide.

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