Football hero Charles leads Welsh figures added to dictionary

Jan 3 2008 by Alice Klein, Western Mail

WELSH footballing legend John Charles leads the group of eight prominent Welsh figures included today in the latest update to the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.

The eight are drawn from fields as diverse as sport, business, politics and the arts.

They are among 200 people, all of whom died in 2004, who have been added to the prestigious reference work.

Joining Charles – generally recognised as Wales’ greatest ever player – among the new Welsh entrants are businessman Sir Julian Hodge, rugby player Vivian Jenkins, Welsh-language writer Islwyn Ffowc Elis, novelists Alun Richard and Bernice Rubens, engineer Cyril Kieft, and Sir Anthony Meyer, who was MP for Clwyd North West.

The dictionary features 55,000 specially-written biographies of those who helped shaped British history from the 4th century BC to 2004.

As well as people widely recognised to have made a beneficial contribution to society, it includes those who have left a mark for unusual or bad reasons, such as the mass murderer Dr Harold Shipman.

All 38,500 subjects from the Victorian version of the dictionary have kept their place but have been updated.

The Oxford version has added a further 16,500 subjects and today a further 211 who died in 2004 will be added to the dictionary’s website.

John Charles, who is widely acknowledged as one of the game’s greatest post-war players, was one of Britain’s first footballers to play overseas, for Juventus and then Roma in Italy – where he was labelled “Il Buon Gigante”, meaning the Gentle Giant.

The businessman and philanthropist Sir Julian Hodge, who founded The Commercial Bank of Wales and Julian Hodge Bank, also has an entry.

His biography was written by Professor Richard Edwards of the Cardiff Business School, one of the leading accounting historians in the world.

He said, “I had written about 12 biographies of other accountants in the past and they asked me to do Sir Julian. I was working as an academic when he oversaw the merger between the University of Wales Institute of Science and Technology and University College, Cardiff, which created the Cardiff Business School.

“He deserves his place in the book because he was a very effective businessman – he actually made Cardiff into a financial centre.

“As a result, South Wales had an institution that was supportive to industry so the Welsh didn’t have to go with cap in hand to the City of London.”

Other notable entrants include Islwyn Ffowc Elis, the Welsh-language writer born in Wrexham, who has been credited with making the Welsh language popular again.

He was a conscientious objector during the Second World War which is when he began writing poetry and prose.

His debut novel Cysgod y Cryman – translated into English as Shadow of the Sickle – was published in 1953 and went on to be chosen as the most significant Welsh language book of the 20th century, in 1999.

His biographer Meic Stephens, Emeritus Professor of Welsh Writing in English at the University of Glamorgan, said he had changed the face of Welsh prose.

He said, “He began writing Welsh stories in a way that was attractive, especially to younger readers.

“He also wrote short stories and plays and so on, he was regarded as one of the best writers of Welsh prose in the post-war period.”

Prof Stephens also wrote the biography of the Caerphilly novelist and short story writer Alun Richard.

He said, “As a native of Pontypridd he wrote novels that reflect South Wales in the 1950s and 1960s – he was a very fine writer.

“I’ve written about 20 or 30 of these biographies now and they take a lot of research.

“You have to get in touch with their families for things like the names of the parents and mothers’ maiden names and things like the year of the marriage and the addresses at which they lived.

“You also have to find out the cause of their death and what they left in their will but these are quite sensitive issues.

“So luckily the Oxford University Press has a research team that will double check things like the will, birth and death certificates at the General Register Office.”

The Oxford DNB, published by Oxford University Press, is updated online three times a year, in January, May, and October. The next online update will be published in May

The eight prominent Welsh figures - page 2