The Christmas tree is leaving. Glasses break against the walls. The rooms are broken. The errant husband's well-chosen designer clothes are sent to the fire. “Look, I can explain,” he bleats. “It was one stupid mistake.”
But that's not true. Ben has had plenty of meetings at conference hotels, as evidenced by all the crude photos on his laptop and saucy messages on his phone — so betrayed fiancée Liv is out for revenge, as shown in the title sequence of The Wilderness (Amazon Prime Video) near Liv's car an open-top car speeding down a deserted road, its tires crushing a big, juicy bug.
Liv is played by Jenna Coleman, who I previously saw as the crystalline Queen Victoria in the ITV period drama, which ended in 2019. But here, as in the B. E. Jones novel on which the series is based, Liv has a Welsh accent. . And Coleman definitely gets it, although it may not be the Welsh accent people are used to. What is commonly heard on television is, unfortunately, the more common sound of the South Wales valleys.
Alex Jones on The One Show, for example, says things that would horrify my ambitious Welsh mother, as it's quite ugly, difficult and working class. Hugh Edwards (born in Bridgend and raised in Llanelli) shares this opinion, but when I was growing up, such words would hold you back.
Note all the contractions in a typical TV Welsh accent. “Get out” is “grout,” even “grout.” “Should” — “gorra”, “that’s all” — “in this way”, “for this” — “frit”, “don’t” — “doan”, “behave” — “byavin”. «Ears» is pronounced like «years.» In the valleys people might ask, “Do you have a car?” And then notice all the extensions. Parental, random, crocodile, actually: they are given more syllables than a native English speaker can imagine. These sayings are brilliantly parodied (“What's Going On?”) by Nessa Ruth Jones in Gavin & Stacy.
Richard Burton originally said this. In his first radio interviews, in the fifties, he sounds like the man Dee Botcher, the Port Talbot actress who plays Jen Jennings in Casualty, whose magnificent booming voice could and probably does carry across mountain ranges. Richard Burton took many elocution classes with his guardian Philip Burton in order to stop calling Port Talbot «Port Tarlbot», making his voice more euphonious and more educated. After all, the cigarettes and booze gave it a uniquely dark and satanic texture. He is obviously still Welsh, but the listener will not know what part of Wales he is from.
That's the problem. The former principality has regional accents as well as those of the middle class or educated people. I'm from Monmouthshire, a border country where the Welsh accent is lighter, and Herefordshire, even the tones of Gloucestershire sometimes mix. Cardiff has its own distinct vernacular — locals pronounce Cardiff as Caer-diff — which may have something to do with it being a port with many Shirley Bassey-like citizens.
Pembrokeshire has a distinct (pleasant) sound, like that of Augustus John, as does the north, home to actual Welsh speakers, which has given rise to the lyrical voices of, say, playwright and performer Emlyn Williams, another of Burton's mentors, and Hugh Griffith, the eccentric bug-eyed character actor who won an Oscar for his role as an Arab in Ben-Hur.
Welsh actor Richard Burton took public speaking lessons art. Photo: Getty
When Peter Sellers was cast in 1962 as the Swansea librarian in Only Two Can Play, an adaptation of Kingsley Amis' novel This Uncertain Feeling, Tenby-born supporting actor Kenneth Griffith took him to meet Welsh poets and Welsh BBC producers. Amis was impressed with the results. Vocally, Sellers has absolutely nailed the «precise local university Welsh-English.»
I myself will be one of many who swapped my regional Welsh accent — halting, yapping but also friendly — for something perhaps a little posher when I attended university outside Wales and subsequently lived on the other side Chepstow Bridge. . This process can always be noticed. You only knew Harry Secombe was Welsh because he sang a lot. The worst culprit was Dylan Thomas, who one day came to London with an absurd, crystalline arrogance and pomposity that one might kindly attribute to drink. His reading of his own poetry is like a parody of Kenneth Williams (whose parents were Welsh).
Anthony Hopkins, Michael Sheen, the late Sir Stanley Baker, Robert Pugh — they, on the other hand, have excellent Welsh. accents that are not exaggerated, not picky. And that's what Jenna Coleman pulled off in The Wild. BE Jones is a Welsh woman who once worked for the Welsh national newspaper, the Western Mail. Liv has a deep tone and avoids singing. It reminded me of Rachel Roberts, Sian Phillips or my friend talk show host Mavis Nicholson. Perfect pronunciation. Pretty big. Even if the origins of each of them were not so great.
Erotic Vagabondage: All About Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor by Roger Lewis published October 26 by Quercus
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