Gwyn A. Williams

Gwyn A. Williams
Professor Gwyn A. Williams
Born	Gwyn Alfred Williams (1925-09-30)30 September 1925 Dowlais, Wales
Died	16 November 1995(1995-11-16) (aged 70) Dre-fach Felindre, Carmarthenshire, Wales
Occupation	Professor, Historian, Presenter
Language	English
Nationality	Welsh
Alma mater	University College Wales, Aberystwyth

Gwyn Alfred "Alf" Williams (30 September 1925 – 16 November 1995)^[1] was a Welsh historian particularly known for his work on Antonio Gramsci and Francisco Goya as well as on Welsh history.

Williams was born in the iron town of Dowlais situated above the industrial town of Merthyr Tydfil in South Wales. He attended the Cyfarthfa Grammar School and later read history at University College Wales, Aberystwyth. During World War II, he joined the British Army and fought in Normandy. Williams received his doctorate for a dissertation later published as Medieval London: from commune to capital. Gwyn Alf Williams was a Communist, a member of the Young Communist League of Britain in his youth and he was the first historian to publish an article in English on Antonio Gramsci.

In 1954, Williams was appointed Lecturer in Welsh History at Aberystwyth University where he worked with another historian of Wales David Williams. He left Aberystwyth for the University of York where he was Chair of History from 1965 to 1974. He moved back to Wales in 1974, becoming Professor of History at University College Cardiff, where he stayed until his retirement in 1983. Throughout his career, Williams was known as an exciting lecturer, capable of drawing large crowds from across the university. After his retirement, he continued to write, but he focused more and more on television and film, presenting, with Wynford Vaughan-Thomas, a 13-part series in 1985 by HTV and Channel 4 on Welsh history entitled The Dragon Has Two Tongues.^[2][3]

Williams was also a supporter of Republicanism; and later a member of Plaid Cymru, he praised the anti-monarchy book The Enchanted Glass by Tom Nairn.^[4] In 1983 he took early retirement from his chair at Cardiff and began making films with Teliesyn, an independent Welsh broadcasting company based in Cardiff. In 1985 he had published his book When Was Wales?, which compatriot Meic Stephens described as 'perhaps his most influential work.'^[5] Williams eventually moved from Cardiff to the village of Dre-fach Felindre in Carmarthenshire.^[6]

• Mediaval London. Abingdon, Oxfordshire: Routledge. 2007 [originally 1963]. ISBN 0-415-41833-X.
• Artisans and sans-culottes Popular movements in France and Britain during the French Revolution (Second revised ed.). London: Libris. 1988 [originally 1968].

• Proletarian order Antonio Gramsci, factory councils and the origins of Italian communism, 1911-1921. London: Pluto Press. 1975. ISBN 0 902818 65 1.
• Goya and the Impossible Revolution. London: Allen Lane. 1976. ISBN 0 7139 0906 4.
• The Merthyr Rising (Second ed.). Cardiff: University of Wales Press. 2013 [originally 1978]. ISBN 9781783160051.
• Madoc The Making of a Myth. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 1987 [originally 1979]. ISBN 0192851780.

• The Search for Beulah Land. London: Routledge. 2022 [originally 1980]. ISBN 9781032271941.
• The Welsh in their History. London: Routledge. 2022 [originally 1982]. ISBN 9781032273006.

• Excalibur The Search for Arthur. London: B.B.C. Books. 1994. ISBN 0563370203.

• Smith, Dai (Spring 1996). "Gwyn A. Williams, 1925–1995". History Workshop Journal. 41. Oxford: Oxford University Press: 306–312.
• Stephens, Meic (18 November 1995). "Obituary: Gwyn A. Williams". The Independent. London. Retrieved 11 December 2009.