First Modern Welsh Historian commemorated

A historian who changed the face of modern Welsh history is to be commemorated with a biennial Public Lecture in his name at Bangor University.

 

The inaugural J. E. Lloyd Lecture will discuss J.E. Lloyd’s own reinterpretation of Welsh history. The Lecture takes place at 6.15 on Friday 22 October at Bangor University’s Main Arts Lecture Theatre and is open to all.

 

J.E.LloydJ.E.LloydJohn Edward Lloyd (1861–1947) played a major part in the early history of the University College of North Wales, Bangor, both as Registrar (1892–1920) and Professor of History (1899–1930).

 

Professor Huw Pryce of the School of History, Welsh History & Archaeology explains: “J.E. Lloyd is best known for his two-volume work, A History of Wales from the Earliest Times to the Edwardian Conquest, completed a century ago and published in January 1911. Thanks to this book in particular, Lloyd blew away a lot of the myths that had surrounded the history of Wales and made welsh history modern academic subject, based on a thorough and critical analysis of the primary sources. At the same time, as an active participant in the Welsh educational and cultural revival of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, this emphasis on critical scholarship was designed to show that Welsh nationhood rested on firm foundations in the past – not on legends.”

 

This lecture; ‘Kings, Saints, and Tribal Society: J. E. Lloyd on Early Medieval Wales’ is being delivered by Professor Thomas Charles-Edwards, Jesus Professor of Celtic, Oxford University. In this lecture he will reflect on J. E. Lloyd’s interpretation of the early history of Wales from the perspective of his own work on the period a century later.

 

Professor Charles-Edwards is a distinguished scholar of early Irish and Welsh history and literature, including early Irish and medieval Welsh law.  A Fellow of the British Academy, an Honorary Member of the Royal Irish Academy and a Fellow of the Learned Society of Wales, his many publications include the major volumes Early Irish and Welsh Kinship (Oxford University Press, 1993) and Early Christian Ireland (Cambridge University Press, 2000). He has recently completed another substantial book: Wales and the Britons, 350–1064, to be published by Oxford University Press.

Publication date: 12 October 2010