Wynford Vaughan-Thomas

Lewis John Wynford Vaughan-Thomas CBE (15 August 1908 – 4 February 1987) was a Welsh newspaper journalist and radio and television broadcaster with a lengthy career. In later life he took the name Vaughan-Thomas after his father.

He was born in Swansea, the second son of Dr. David Vaughan Thomas, a Professor of Music, and Morfydd Lewis. He attended Swansea Grammar School where the English Master was the father of Dylan Thomas who was just entering the school at the time that Vaughan-Thomas was leaving for Exeter College, Oxford where he read Modern History and gained a second class Academic degree.

In the mid 1930s he joined the BBC and in 1937 gave the Welsh commentary on the Coronation of King George VI. This was the precursor to several English commentaries on state occasions he was to give after World War II. During the war he established his name and reputation as one of the BBC's most distinguished war correspondents of World War II. His most memorable report was from an RAF Lancaster bomber during a real bombing raid over Nazi Berlin. Other notable reports were from Anzio, the Burgundy vineyards, Lord Haw Haw's broadcasting studio and the Belsen concentration camp. In 1953 he was one of a team of BBC commentators on the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II. It was fitting that he commentated on the funeral of his fellow wartime BBC correspondent Richard Dimbleby who died in 1965.

In 1967, after leaving the BBC, he was one of the founders of Harlech TV (HTV), now ITV Wales, being appointed Director of Programmes, as a frequent TV broadcaster himself throughout his early career with the BBC he had adopted the required BBC accent of the time but employed his more natural native Welsh accent to even better effect in his later career. He wrote numerous books, many on Wales and a favourite subject of his, the Welsh countryside, he officially opened the Pembrokeshire Coastal Path National Park at its start in Amroth.

His wartime overview and experiences, and his successful broadcasting career later, enabled him to view life and its vagaries with what he called 'pointless optimism' - a perspective that certainly served him well.

He was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 1974, and raised to Commander (CBE) in 1986.

He died in Fishguard in 1987.

A memorial to him was constructed after his death, completed and unveiled in 1990 near Aberhosan in the form of a toposcope looking out over the rolling hills and mountains of Wales, with a depiction of the man himself pointing towards Snowdon, Wales' highest peak, which is just visible on a clear day.

Works

* "Anzio" (1961)
* "Madly in All Directions" (1967)
* "Portrait of Gower" (1976)
* "Trust to Talk" (1980)
* "Wynford Vaughan-Thomas's Wales" (1981)
* "Princes of Wales" (1982)
* "The Countryside Companion" (1983)
* "Dalgety" (1984)
* "Wales: a History" (1985)
* "How I Liberated Burgundy: And Other Vinous Adventures" (1985)

External links

* [http://www.bbc.co.uk/wales/walesonair/database/berlin.shtml BBC Wales]
* [http://www.bbc.co.uk/cymru/cymruaryrawyr/database/wynfford.shtml BBC Cymru]

References

* "Dictionary of National Biography 1986-1990", ISBN No. 019865212

Biography

* "Trust to Talk", an autobiography.