About the Author

Raymond Williams was born in the Welsh border village of Pandy in 1921. He was educated at Abergavenny Grammar School and at Trinity College, Cambridge and he served in the Second World War as a Captain in the 21st Anti-Tank Regiment, Royal Artillery. After the war he began an influential career in education with the Extra Mural Department at Oxford University. His life-long concern with the interface between social development and cultural process marked him our as one of the most perceptive and influential intellectual figures of his generation. Alongside his hugely influential literary criticism, Williams' most well-known work is his novel, 'Border Country' (1960) which was the first of a trilogy of novels with a predominantly Welsh theme or setting, and his engagement with Wales continued in the political thriller 'The Volunteers' (1978), 'Loyalties' (1985) and the massive two-volume 'People of the Black Mountains' (1988-90). He died in 1988.