Cylchgronau Cymru

Chwiliwch trwy dros 450 o deitlau a 1.2 miliwn o dudalennau

JOHN Goronwy Edwards was born on 14 May 1891, the son of John and Emma Edwards. His father was a railway signalman and for a period his employment took him from his native Flintshire to Manchester, where their son was born. On returning to their native heath, Goronwy attended the village school at Halkyn and went on to Holywell Grammar School. In 1909 he was elected scholar at Jesus College, Oxford, completing by 1913 an illustrious undergraduate career. He then moved to Manchester as a research student before enlisting, in August 1915, with the Royal Welch Fusiliers. He saw a period of active service in France, but this was a period in his life about which he remained noticeably taciturn, except only for the occasions immediately after the war, when he talked to the men back from the forces who were his first students at Oxford. His reticence was itself a testimony to the effect upon him of the experience of those wartime years. He was appointed Fellow and Tutor of Jesus College in 1919. There he remained, serving college and university in numerous capacities (including those of senior tutor and vice-principal of his college) until his appointment in 1948 as Director of the Institute of Historical Research and Professor of History in the University of London. At Oxford and especially in London he served, often as chairman, on a wide range of committees and public bodies, but each undertaking was closely related to the teaching of history and to the organisation and pro- motion of scholarly studies. His own investigations were pursued with consistent application down the years, and his retirement in 1960 meant no withdrawal from the pursuit of his chosen discipline. For Goronwy Edwards, as scholar and tutor, Oxford was both a major influence and a place for which he had an enduring affection. His teaching earned him great respect and he established himself as a major figure among Oxford historians. A later prime minister, Sir Harold Wilson, was amongst those pupils on whom his tuition made a profound impression. His election to an honorary fellowship of Jesus College in 1949 did much to compensate for the wrench which he had felt on eventually leaving Oxford, and it created a permanent bond with his college which he greatly valued. Yet his Oxford was not a place where all other influences were lost without JOHN GORONWY EDWARDS (1891-1976) OBITUARY