Goronwy Rees

Goronwy Rees (29 November 1909 – 12 December 1979) was a Welsh journalist, academic and writer.

Rees was born in Aberystwyth, where his father was minister of the Tabernacle Calvinistic Methodist Church. The family later moved to Roath, Cardiff, and Goronwy was educated at Cardiff High School and later at New College, Oxford.

He was during the 1930s a Marxist intellectual, and in contact with the Cambridge Five spy ring through Guy Burgess. Right at the end of his life he admitted spying for the USSR for a short time, and accused MI5 man Guy Liddell also of being a spy. He also sat on the Departmental Committee on Homosexual Offences and Prostitution, and for approximately the last decade of his life wrote a column (signed simply 'R') on current political affairs for the magazine Encounter.

Works

• The Summer Flood (1932)
• Where No Wounds Were (1950)
• A Bundle of Sensations: Sketches in Autobiography (1961)
• Multimillionaires: Six Studies In Wealth (1961)
• The Rhine (1967)
• St Michael: A History of Marks & Spencer (1969)
• The Great Slump: Capitalism in Crisis 1929-1933 (1970)
• Conversations with Kafka by Gustav Janouch (1970) translator
• A Chapter of Accidents (1972)
• Brief Encounters (1974)

Offices held

Academic offices
Preceded by Ifor Leslie Evans	Principal of the University College of Wales Aberystwyth 1953-1957	Succeeded by Sir Thomas Parry

References

• Jenny Rees (1994) Looking for Mr. Nobody. The Secret Life of Goronwy Rees

External links

• Page at Spartacus