SOURCE: "Distorting Truth," in From Fantasy to Faith: The Philosophy of Religion and Twentieth-Century Literature, Macmillan, 1991, pp. 84-94.

In the following excerpt, Phillips provides a religious context for the portrayal of Welsh Nonconformism in Evans's stories.

[The] words in our lives reveal who we are. Of course, those lives do not conform to a neat pattern, but are, rather, a mixed bag. People's perspectives vary, so that the aspects under which they see the world cannot be taken for granted. One of the most difficult things is to see ourselves. We may not appreciate the distortions in our midst. We may not be ready to have them pointed out, least of all by one of our own kind.

In 1932, the painter, Evan Walters, offered to lend his fine portrait of the writer, Caradoc Evans, to the National Museum of Wales. The offer was declined on the grounds that...