John Davies (25 April 1938 – 16 February 2015) was a Welsh historian and a television and radio broadcaster. He attended university at Cardiff and Cambridge and taught Welsh at Aberystwyth. He wrote a number of books on Welsh history, including A History of Wales (Hanes Cymru in Welsh).
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Education
Davies was born in the Rhondda, Wales, and studied at both University College, Cardiff, and Trinity College, Cambridge.
Life and work
Davies was married with four children. In later life he acknowledged that he was bisexual. After teaching Welsh history at Swansea University and Aberystwyth University, he retired to Cardiff, and appeared frequently as a presenter and contributor to history programmes on television and radio.
In the mid-1980s, Davies was commissioned to write a concise history of Wales by Penguin Books to add to its Pelican series of the histories of nations. The decision by Penguin to commission the volume in Welsh was "unexpected and highly commendable," wrote Davies. The Welsh version is titled Hanes Cymru, whilst the English version is titled A History of Wales.
"I seized the opportunity to write of Wales and the Welsh. When I had finished, I had a typescript which was almost three times larger than the original commission," wrote Davies. The original voluminous typescript was first published in hardback under the Allen Lane imprint. Davies took a sabbatical from his post at the University College of Wales and wrote most of the chapters while touring Europe. Davies dedicated Hanes Cymru to his wife, Janet Mackenzie Davies.