Welsh Journals

OBITUARY Dr. R.F. Walker By W.C. Philpin It is with sadness that we record the death of one of our prominent academic members on 3rd October 2001. While Dr. Walker had been a member for many years, he was unable to attend regularly at our monthly meetings because of the distance from Aberystwyth but he did manage to support many of our summer visits. He was brought up in Tenby where he attended Greenhill School and came under the influence of Wilfrid Harrison and developed a fascination for anything to do with history the subject which was to form the basis of his lifelong career. Ron edited and was a major contributor to Volume 2 of the Pembrokeshire County History: Medieval Pembrokeshire, and at the launch in May paid tribute to his mentor Wilfrid Harrison. He entered Aberystwyth University in 1942 to read history, but, like many others his studies were interrupted by the war and he served in the Royal Air Force as a navigator on Lancaster bombers. After 3 years he returned to Aberystwyth where he got a first class honours degree and went on to obtain his M.A. (Wales) with further study at Jesus College, Oxford. A D.Phil. followed this on a study of the Welsh Marches. While at Aberystwyth Ron met his future wife Geraldene Thomas whose death was recorded in the last volume of this Journal and in whose memory he made a generous contribution to the publication of both volumes. He returned to Aberystwyth in 1956 as a junior lecturer, and he spent the remainder of his academic career in the same department retiring as Senior Lecturer in 1991. His appointment in 1956 was in Diplomatic and Administrative History where he was one of the founders of the Diploma in Archive Adminis- tration for which he subsequently took entire responsibility. He published widely in the English Historical Review, the Welsh His-