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The English version of Welsh historian John Davies's autobiography, translated by Jon Gower.

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9781784612177

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On the cover of this volume there is a fine photograph of the author, taken by Emyr Young. It sets the tone for the whole book. John Davies looks out with a wry smile and a certain detachment, as if observing the activities of his fellow human beings with amusement and yet with understanding. Originally published in Welsh, this English version, well translated by Jon Gower, brings John Daviess own story to a wider readership. Unusually perhaps for a historian, Davies confesses his greater love for places than people, and though the book is full of the people he met in his varied life, it is his sense of place which comes across strongest. Born in Treorci, Rhondda, in 1938, he witnessed as a small boy the strength of the valley community at a time when the mining industry still held sway. Moving to Bwlch-llan in Ceredigion when his mother was appointed head teacher of the village school, he saw life in a rural area which had no electricity and still clung to long-established traditions of neighbourliness. He studied at Cardiff and Cambridge universities, and his research at Cambridge treated of the creation of Cardiff as the premier coal port of Wales, the story of which he published as Cardiff and the Marquesses of Bute. For some years a lecturer at Swansea, he moved to Aberystwyth to teach at the university there and to become warden of Neuadd Pantycelyn, the Welsh-language hall of residence, at a critical time in the history of the Welsh language movement in the late 1960s and 1970s. His influence on generations of students was considerable, but he is content simply to note the names of some of the people he enjoyed meeting. The latter part of the book is concerned with his travels, alone and with members of his family, in the years following his early retirement from university life. Nowhere is his sense of place stronger than in his descriptions of the many countries and cities he visited all over the world. He was obviously convinced that his great work, Hanes Cymru, published later in an English version, A History of Wales, benefited from having been written mostly in Italy, and no doubt it was this which gave the book its qualities of objectivity and balance. This one-volume tour de force, published by Penguin, has played a vital role in making Welsh history known to a wider audience, but more was to come in the shape of the Encyclopaedia of Wales, of which he was principal editor, and the numerous television programmes and series which popularised Welsh history. These and many other achievements are described quietly and modestly in this most readable book. More than once in the course of these pages Davies, who died in 2015, protests his atheism, and he would reject all thought of an afterlife. Yet there is something rather appealing in the idea of him looking down on us with that same amused smile, reflecting on the genius and folly of his own people, whose history he did so much to elucidate. Rhidian Griffiths It is possible to use this review for promotional purposes, but the following acknowledgment should be included: A review from www.gwales.com, with the permission of the Welsh Books Council. Gellir defnyddio'r adolygiad hwn at bwrpas hybu, ond gofynnir i chi gynnwys y gydnabyddiaeth ganlynol: Adolygiad oddi ar www.gwales.com, trwy ganiatd Cyngor Llyfrau Cymru. -- Welsh Books Council

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