Philip Mitchell is an English author, playwright, poet and translator. Born in

Manchester Manchester () is a city in Greater Manchester, England. It had a population of 552,000 in 2021. It is bordered by the Cheshire Plain to the south, the Pennines to the north and east, and the neighbouring city of Salford to the west. The t ...

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...

he is an established author with

BBC Radio BBC Radio is an operational business division and service of the British Broadcasting Corporation (which has operated in the United Kingdom under the terms of a royal charter since 1927). The service provides national radio stations covering th ...

Drama and was a question-setter on the UK game show ''Bacha Hi O'Ma!'' (the Welsh equivalent of ''Blind Date'') but is perhaps best known for his acclaimed translation of

Caradog Prichard Caradog Prichard (3 November 1904 – 25 February 1980) was a Welsh poet and novelist writing in Welsh. His daughter, Mari Prichard, was married to the late Humphrey Carpenter. Caradog Prichard was born and grew up in the Gwynedd slate-quarrying ...

Welsh language Welsh ( or ) is a Celtic language family, Celtic language of the Brittonic languages, Brittonic subgroup that is native to the Welsh people. Welsh is spoken natively in Wales, by some in England, and in Y Wladfa (the Welsh colony in Chubut P ...

novel ''Un Nos Ola Leuad'', as ''One Moonlit Night'' (). The translation was adapted for broadcast as a radio play (by Mitchell himself) and was transmitted on BBC Radio 4. It was also adapted for the stage and was performed at several theatres including Theatr Clwyd in Mold, Theatr Gwynedd in Bangor, and The Young Vic in London. Mitchell discovered Prichard's novel when studying Welsh A-level (for which it was a set text) and was surprised to find that it had never been translated fully into English. Indeed, there were those who claimed the novel could ''not'' be translated into English as it is written entirely in a dialect common in the Bethesda district of North Wales (where Prichard was born) but little-known outside that area. Canongate Press in

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first accepted the translation for publication but the rights to publish Mitchell's translation were later acquired by publishers

Penguin Books Penguin Books is a British publishing, publishing house. It was co-founded in 1935 by Allen Lane with his brothers Richard and John, as a line of the publishers The Bodley Head, only becoming a separate company the following year.London London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...

and New Directions in

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. Canongate republished the novel in January 2009 with an afterword by Jan Morris and a foreword by Niall Griffiths. (, ) " . . . translated by Philip Mitchell in prose which miraculously conveys the incantatory biblical and Celtic cadences of the original." 'The Guardian'', 10 January 2009 "The translation by Philip Mitchell – the first complete one in English – is lovely." 'The Observer'', 11 January 2009 "Philip Mitchell succeeds superbly in bringing Prichard’s vibrant prose to life." 'The Guardian'', 26 November 2014 "Philip Mitchell's brilliant translation will help ensure that One Moonlit Night becomes a classic in the English-speaking world." '' ashington Post' Foreign language translations of Mitchell's English translation have made the book available to readers in several European countries.

References

Welsh writers Writers from Manchester Living people Year of birth missing (living people) {{wales-writer-stub