We are delighted to be celebrating the 50 th anniversary of Planet: the Welsh Internationalist magazine this year. This will culminate in the publication of issue 240 on 1 November 2020, and will be marked by a celebratory party and symposium. The party and symposium will now be postponed until next year, and will be an opportunity to look forward to the next 50 years. In the meantime, we are planning imaginative ways of commemorating half a century of the magazine later in 2020, and will stay in touch as these projects develop.

Planet’s story

“Time and again Planet has taken me upwards and outwards from the fulcrum of Wales to the furthest reaches of discussion and discovery.”

“I know of no other magazine which collates Welsh ideas and values so thoughtfully with intellectual developments in the world at large, and interprets the results in such excellent
journalism.” Jan Morris

Despite the scale suggested by the magazine’s masthead, Planet is run as a micro-organisation, albeit one that seeks to over-reach the limitations of Wales’ political status to offer Welsh perspectives on the world and vice versa. Planet’s authors have included R.S. Thomas, Jan Morris, Raymond Williams, Chinua Achebe, Menna Elfyn, Leo Abse, Gwynfor Evans, Mererid Hopwood and Stevie Davies, and each issue has featured both ground-breaking established authors and emerging talent in its pages.

While sometimes perceived as a ‘cultural magazine’, Planet has always found ways to be a vessel for often radical political perspectives, from the first issue’s opening challenge to the then Secretary of State for Wales George Thomas onwards. The magazine arose out of the publication of The Welsh Extremist: a Culture in Crisis by its founding editor Ned Thomas – an appeal to the English New Left as to why they should be in solidarity with the Welsh-language movement. It has provided a platform for pioneering work on topics from political independence to climate change and species loss – often long before these issues were on the mainstream media agenda.

The magazine has also always had a core role of bridging different cultures within an often very fractured nation. This has sometimes taken the form of bringing Welsh-language material to an English-language readership for the first time in translation, including Saunders Lewis’ seminal Tynged yr Iaith speech, and work by writers including Kate Roberts and J.R. Jones. Latterly this ethos of unifying language cultures has been expressed through our ‘Welsh Keywords’ series, inspired by Keywords – by one of our former Patrons Raymond Williams.

At the same time, from the start, Planet has played an important role in the development of Welsh Writing in English, being one of the first outlets to publish pioneering work from Anglophone areas of Wales by writers including Ron Berry and Alun Richards; and latterly authors such as Rachel Trezise and Gee Williams. Our recent ‘Retracing Wales’ and ‘Reading Between the Lines’ series take the reader on journeys to different corners of Wales, and are examples of how Planet gives insights into very diverse narratives of Welsh experience.

The magazine has also taken a pioneering approach to championing distinctively Welsh visual culture, being an early platform for art critics such as Peter Lord and Osi Rhys Osmond, and continues to offer rigorous critique of Welsh contemporary arts from the most challenging and avant-garde to the most popular.

Planet’s internationalism has taken many forms from the beginning. The magazine has featured articles that connect Wales to other European stateless nations, from a feature by Sartre on the rights of minority language speakers, to works by writers from Catalonia, Brittany, Scotland, Northern Ireland and beyond. Another, recent form of internationalism has been a series that juxtaposes the cultural and political experiences of coalfield communities in Wales and across the world. From the start, when the field of ‘Postcolonial Literature’ was in its infancy, Planet has provided a platform for writers from post-colonial nations worldwide including Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, Jean Rhys and Naguib Mahfouz; and in latter years voices representing perspectives from the Global South – India, Cameroon, Iraq, Kurdistan and beyond in the work of (e.g.) Manoranjan Byapari, Eric Ngalle Charles, Rabab Ghazoul and Ciwanmerd Kulek.

In its politics and social justice coverage, Planet has offered unique, in-depth commentary on a tumultuous half century for Wales, chronicling its anxieties and hopes throughout eras of the Cold War, Welsh-language direct-action protest, the emergence of feminism, the Miners’ Strike, Thatcherism, European integration, the development of devolution, the Iraq War, climate change, austerity, the EU referendum, Black Lives Matter and Covid-19, the latter discussed in our new series Breathing Freely: Possibilities for a Post-Pandemic Society.

Since 2009 we have published topical features, podcasts and videos online as Planet Extra, and in 2016 launched Planet Platform – a dedicated online space for work by students we have mentored in writing for publication. Our role in fostering the next generation of journalists and writers is also manifested in our annual Young Writers’ Essay Competition.

This inter-generational dialogue on the past and future of Wales will be marked through several special features in our 2020 celebratory issue, which will be published at the beginning of November.

Planet is published with the financial support of the Books Council of Wales and the Public Interest News Foundation. It is hosted within Aberystwyth University, and receives financial sponsorship from the School of English, Communication and Philosophy, and the School of Journalism, Media Studies and Cultural Studies at Cardiff University. For more information about Planet, please see our website: www.planetmagazine.org.uk

What others say about Planet

“Planet is an outstanding publication that is absolutely vital to the public sphere in Wales.” Desolation Radio’s Dan Evans.

For more testimonials about Planet, from figures including Charlotte Williams, Mike Parker, Menna Elfyn, Jan Morris and Rachel Trezise see https://planetmagazine.org.uk/endorsements

Media Enquiries

If you would like to feature coverage of our 50 th anniversary celebrations, or to arrange an event in conjunction with our anniversary, please contact Emily Trahair (editor) at
emily.trahair@planetmagazine.org.uk