Richard Llewellyn Books In Order

Publication Order of Collier Spymasters Books

Publication Order of How Green Was My Valley Books

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Richard Llewellyn is a bestselling British novelist that is best known for writing some very popular historical fiction works.

The author was born in 1906 in Hendon, North London to Welsh parents. However, he always claimed to have been born in St. Davids in Wales, which he went on to describe so well in his blockbuster novel “How Green Was My Valley.”

According to the author, his education was very chaotic and was done piecemeal in London, Cardiff, and St. Davids.

At the age of sixteen, Llewellyn was sent to study the hotel business in Italy, where he would begin his apprenticeship in one of the many kitchens across the country. Even as he studied hospitality, he also enrolled in classes in sculpture and art in Venice.
It was while he was working with an Italian film unit that he began to feel that he needed a more solid existence.

While he was still in his teenage years, he decided to join the British military where he would serve for five years. During this time, he got interested in traveling the world, which would ultimately become his avocation.

In 1931, Richard Llewellyn quit the army to return to civilian life and thereafter took a job as an extra in a movie and then got employment at a film magazine where he was a writer.

From these beginnings, he would successfully work his way up the industry to become assistant director, scenarist, and production manager. He would ultimately reach the highest levels as a director.

Whenever he had some free time from filmmaking, he would make time to write and ultimately wrote the melodrama “Poison Pen” in 1938. The huge success of the work got him started as a professional author.

He would soon begin writing his debut novel in St. David, which he would add to in India, revise in Cardiff, and finally be completed in London.

“How Green Was My Valley” his debut novel was very popular as it went on to sell more than 50,000 copies in England and almost double that number upon publishing in the United States.

Several of Llewellyn’s novels make use of a Welsh theme starting from his debut, which was made into a classic Hollywood film and won international acclaim.

Over the years, Richard Llewellyn lived a very peripatetic life as he traveled all over the world.

Prior to the Second World War, he spent time working in hospitality establishments, wrote plays, worked in the coal mines, and published his best-known work.

While fighting in the Second World War, he would rise up the ranks to become Captain in the Welsh Guard Corps. After the conclusion of the war, he would become a journalist and covered the Nuremberg Trials before he started screenwriting for MGM.
Thereafter, he penned several novels that would make his name as one of the best historical fiction authors of his time. One of his most profound at the time was a work that investigated the disappearance of two English men behind the Iron Curtain.
He would also pen several romances targeted at younger readers, even though these did not become as popular as his historical fiction. Later on in his life, he moved to Eilat in the West Bank.

“How Green Was My Valley” by Richard Llewellyn is a compelling narrative of a close-knit and hardworking coal mining family of Welsh origin known as the Morgans.

The story has a setting in the late Victorian Era, and is told from the perspective of the youngest of the Morga siblings in Huw.

The Morgans have enough but are not rich and it is not long before they are facing a lot of troubles just as the black coal slag piles up and marring the beautiful countryside.
They have to deal with labor unrest, strikes and shrinking wages as mine owners seem to be more concerned about profits rather than their community or the workers.

Combined with this are a new idealistic minister, hard times gossipy neighbors, troubled relationships, and a school that forces students to speak English rather than Welsh, which is their native tongue.
Llewellyn writes a clever and wonderful fiction that explores how people tend to remember events from the past fondly, even as they forget just how bad things were.

It is a nostalgic work that is told from the perspective of an elder reflecting on his childhood and life living in Wales.

“Up Into the Singing Mountain” by Richard Llewellyn begins just like the first work in the series.

Huw is getting ready to leave his home in Wales but instead of a long flashback, this novel goes forward. We see him living in Patagonia in Argentina where there is a thriving community of Welsh expatriates most of whom are Nothern Welsh.
Huw moved into the small town as a boarder but soon enough he sets up a carpentry business. He soon sees his business booming as there had been a devastating flood the previous year.

In addition to his business booming, he meets Lal a beautiful woman but in a weird turn of events has to relive events from his childhood.

Llewellyn does a great job in characterization, making his readers connect with the characters and the settings.

Huw continues to triumph despite huge challenges and what is even more impressive is that he adheres to his principles of right and wrong, even if sometimes it may cost him a lot.
This is a novel that makes one long and ache for a home left behind even as it answers many of the unanswered questions from the first novel.

Richard Llewellyn’s novel “Down Where the Moon is Small” is the story of Huw who started out as a teenager and young boy living in a small mining town in South Wales.
He would become less sympathetic and relatable over the course of the series and plain lecherous in this work.

Even though he is a married man, he just cannot be faithful and often has sex with all manner of women that he comes across.

This makes him a much less relatable character as Llewellyn explores the many changes that are bound to happen in people’s lives.

While people might start out very moral and principled, this does not mean that they will mature into even more principled people as showcased by the change in the character of Huw.