On June 28th I will be talking about the new collection Leaving the Hills on Radio Wales Arts Review at 6.30
Leaving the Hills cover sign off 19224
Click for cover of the book…
Poetry Reading at Cardigan Cellar Bards October 11th in the Castle Cafe.
NEW TALK:
The Glamorgan Icarus
Professor Tony Curtis has researched and written a new talk to be offered to groups and societies.
OCTOBER 8th Cowbridge U3A Town Hall
OCTOBER 9th at LLANTWIT HISTORY SOCIETY 7PMrepeated on the 24th in CF61 in the morning.,
October 10th Creigiau Village Friends 2pm
November 7th 1pm for the Newport U3A in the Dolmen Theatre.
November 13th for the Bridgend History Society 7pm
SEE BELOW FOR A DESCRPTION…..
2025 – February 7th Cowbridge History Society 7.30 Ramoth Chapel
April 5th Talk to Friends of the National Museum “Augustus John, Sir William Orpen and the German spy.”
“The Glamorgan Icarus: how a young pilot took off from RAF Llandow in 1941 in the Vale of Glamorgan and landed with the most famous American poem of the Second World War.”
A 50 mins talk with over fifty Powerpoint images.
Contact: profcurtis@btinternet.com
07789182790
The Glamorgan Icarus
Above me the stars, in all their brittle intensity, seem to watch with me through the long night’s vigil and I am not alone.
On the 18th of August, 1941 a young American airman took off in his Spitfire from the Operational Training Unit in Llandow, near the town of Llantwit Major in the Vale of Glamorgan. He rose to some 30,000 feet over the Bristol Channel and Somerset. He landed safely and later that day began to write a sonnet which he sent to his parents on September 3rd.
Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I’ve climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds, – and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of – wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov’ring there,
I’ve chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air…
Up, up the long, delirious burning blue
I’ve topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace
Where never lark, or even eagle flew –
And, while with silent, lifting mind I’ve trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.
John Gillespie Magee’s poem “High Flight” is now held in the John Magee Papers in the Library of Congress Manuscript Collection in Washington D.C. It is one of the most quoted and cited poems in the USA’s war experience.
In November 2019 Tony gave his talk “Wales and the Second World: Poets, Painters, Pacifists and my Parents” to the Barry War Museum. There will be other presentations through the year and on October 14th, 2020 he had hoped to present the talk at the National Library in Aberystwyth.
STILL AVAILABLE FOR BOOKINGS IN 2023 and beyond….
2018 – Tony undertook a tour of his illustrated talk “The Great War: Pembrokeshire to Passchendaele and Perth”, which will wove stories about his family at war and some of the most notable writings and art of the conflict.
From Pembrokeshire to Passchendaele and Perth: my family in the Great War
2018 was a special year of remembrance as the War to End All Wars is commemorated after one hundred years. Tony Curtis undertook a schedule of Powerpoint illustrated talks and readings from his work and from the classic World War One poets and art.
In this he traces some of the stories of the Curtis and Barrah families from Tallyho Farm in Llangwm to the Battle of Jutland, the Battle of Cambrai and a grave alongside those of Chinese labourers; to Perth, Australia and the ancient kingdoms in Mesopotamia. The remarkable narrative reaches as far as contemporary Hollywood. He will read from the work of amongst others Siegfried Sassoon, Kate Roberts, Hedd Wyn, David Jones, Wyn Griffiths, R.S.Thomas and Bertrand Russell. He will illustrate his talk with the art of Paul Nash, David Jones, E.H. Shepherd, Lucy Kemp-Welsh and Frank Brangwyn.
Tony has produced three books on the subject of war and is the only poet from Wales to have published a collection dedicated entirely to the subject. War Voices (Seren 1995) brought together poems from the American Civil War, through the two world wars to the Balkans conflict and the nuclear threat. And his anthology After the First Death is a definitive collection of the Welsh experience of War. Seren published a companion volume of essays: Wales at War: Critical Essays on Literature and Art.
His novel Darkness in the City of Light is set in wartime Paris.
Tony has researched the Great War experiences of both his Pembrokeshire and Berkshire families. Every region and nation in Britain and its empire served in the war and suffered huge losses. Remarkably though, three of the most significant Great War writers served in the Royal Welsh Fusiliers: Robert Graves, David Jones and Siegfried Sassoon and there is a particular Wales contribution to the fighting and to those objectors of conscience. There will be readings from these writers and others from Tony’s Seren anthology After the First Death as well as his own poetry and recent research. The Barrahs from Pembrokeshire and the Curtises from Berkshire served and died in conflicts from South Africa and Mesopotamia through the Western Front to the North Sea. Tony will weave together untold, remarkable stories and some of the most memorable writing of the century in a tour that already takes in three festivals and National Museum of Wales and the National Library of Wales.
To book this talk, contact profcurtis@btinternet.com
Above:
James Charles Thomas, the writer’s Gran’s cousin who died Nov. 1917 in the Battle of Cambrai. In the twelfth century the Llangwm area was settled by Flemings brought over by Henry I; James by dying in Flanders was completing a circle.
Below are Fred and Jack Barrah in Australian Light Horse uniforms with their mother Sarah just before embarking for Europe and the war in 1915. They were descended from my family who emigrated as “Diggers” in 1856. Both men were wounded, but survived.
