The backlash to ‘renaming’ the Brecon Beacons is a gift to nationalists

‘As tedious as a tired horse…worse than a smoky house’ was how Shakespeare’s Hotspur described Wales’s national hero, Owain Glyndŵr. Perhaps, as the late Jan Morris wrote of these words for The Spectator, it could be a timeless characteristic of all Welshmen. The Welsh can be defensive, melancholic and (whisper it quietly) prone to self-pity, particularly when it comes to relations with England. Having the English next door, medieval conquerors turned modern ignorant neighbours, will always transfix Welsh imagination and provoke tension.

Yet how futile Anglo-Welsh relations have become that the modern-day battlefield of two nations with a rich, shared history, has been entangled into the culture war, with the ‘renaming’ of the Brecon Beacons national park. Few issues have stirred such indignation among English (and Welsh) Tory MPs, and the fringes of the chattering class, as much as calling the park Bannau Brycheiniog: its indigenous Welsh name.

‘Insane’ was the conclusion of one unhappy columnist at the national park’s name, as others decried British society’s descent into ‘wokery’ and ‘mental illness’.