Saunders Lewis was a Welsh politician, poet, dramatist, Medievalist, and literary critic. Born into a Welsh-speaking ministerial family in Greater Liverpool, Lewis studied in a public school growing up. He rediscovered the importance of both his heritage language and cultural roots while serving as a junior officer in the British Army during the trench warfare of the First World War. As a vocal supporter of Welsh nationalism, Lewis believed, however, that language revival, cultural nationalism and the decolonisation of Welsh-language literature, the dramatic arts, and culture needed to precede Welsh devolution or political independence. Otherwise, as Lewis wrote in 1918, "the Welsh Parliament would [only] be an enlarged County Council."

Plaid Cymru is a centre-left to left-wing, Welsh nationalist political party in Wales, committed to Welsh independence from the United Kingdom.