Welsh Journals

Dr. Elwyn Davies, a Vice-President of the Pembrokeshire Historical Society, died on 18 September, 1986, in his seventy-eighth year. He had a distinguished career in University Teaching and Administration and during the war years in Naval Intelligence. From 1963 until 1969 he was Permanent Secretary of the Welsh Department of the Ministry of Education. He then retired to live in Tenby. In retirement he continued to be actively engaged in Welsh affairs and when he died he was President of the National Library of Wales. He was, indeed, a national figure. But there is a particular reason why he should be long remembered by all those who love the old county of Pembroke. For it was he who in 1973, took the occasion of the impending reorganisation of local government to suggest the writing of a county history. He pointed out that it would be a pity if Pembrokeshire, which had been renowned for its historians from the time of George Owen onwards, did not have its own, modern, county history. His proposal was sponsored by the Pembrokeshire Local History Society, a forerunner of our present society, and supported by a generous trust fund established by the Welsh Church Fund Committee of the Pembrokeshire County Council. Over the years, Dr. Elwyn Davies persuaded other benefactors to contribute to this fund. The trustees had no hesitation in appointing him their Chairman and General Editor of the county history. He accepted full responsibility for setting the necessary work afoot and when he died he was engaged in overseeing the details of printing and publishing the first volume. He did not live to see the fulfilment of a project which stemmed essentially from his initiative. But it was his unfailing interest and unceasing labours which kept the work in train and it is pre-eminently to him that we shall owe the first volume of the county history when it appears. OBITUARY Dr. Elwyn Davies