| Teacher, Writer, Animated Critical Spirit |
In Memory |
| Hazel Walford Davies , Education and Critical Culture of Wales , November 22, 2025 |
The academic career of Hazel Walford Davies began with her appointment as lecturer at Aberystwyth University. She became a professor, and was chair of the management board of the Centre for Higher Education from 2006 to 2011. This led to the foundation of Coleg Cymraeg Cenedlaethol. Latterly she became a visiting professor of Literary, Cultural and Theatre Studies, University of South Wales. In 2014, she was elected a Fellow of the Learned Society of Wales. I knew Hazel over eighteen years. Our encounters were regular but not frequent. When they occurred I enjoyed her company hugely. Her judgements, and views, came with the consideration to be expected from a scholar but also had an uninhibited directness. To be in her company was to be with a personality infused with a zest for theatre, writing and critical comment. I first met Hazel in the early part of the century. The department of drama, and associated fields, in Aberystwyth had expanded greatly. I learned that Hazel was hosting a series of sessions with visiting dramatists. I asked if an outsider, with an interest, might attend. I missed Greg Cullen but was with an audience of students to hear Charles Way and Dic Edwards. The sessions that lasted four to five hours were scintillating. There was a mention of Saunders Lewis; Hazel brought her hands together in a simulacrum of prayer. Hazel's absorption in the dramatists of that time took form in two books. She edited “State of Play” (Parthian Books 1998). Subtitled “4 Playwrights of Wales”, the book comprised 20 essays, with chronologies, on Ed Thomas, Greg Cullen, Charles Way and Dic Edwards. “Now You're Talking” (Parthian Books 2005) was subtitled “Drama in Conversation.” The book was made of transcripts of interviews with 15 dramatists of Wales. In her foreword she wrote of her interviewees: “They speak honestly, often sharply, about matters that concern them as both artists and people living ordinary lives in society. One, when asked to describe the state of Welsh theatre at the turn of the millennium, used the term “strangulated.” * * * * During her teaching time in Aberystwyth we would meet on and off by chance. On one occasion Theatr Genedlaethol was visiting. The production had translated Pinter's “the Caretaker” into Welsh. Her reaction was no-nonsense. “I shan't be going” she said. “And if the company can't attract someone like me, who is it addressing?” The next occasion we met was very different and not expected. In the winter of 2010 the fledgling National Theatre of Wales decided that a new surge of theatre needed a new environment of critics. The tradition in Wales, it was explained, leaned towards “praise criticism.” As a member of the new board for the new company put it the premise tended to be “thank you so much for putting this production on for us.” So, at 10:00 a.m, on a February morning I found myself in an Academi office. Three of the panel were new faces to me but not the chair. Hazel conducted the session adroitly for the selection of candidates the New Critics Programme. Two weeks after that I spent a weekend in Castle Arcade, the home of the National Theatre of Wales. London critics, the very best, attended from their usual jobs for the Times, Guardian and Independent. The first session for the apprentice critics was with Hazel. She spoke her opening line: “Criticism in Wales”- a pause for emphasis- “is in a state of sickness.” The critics from London knew theatre to its very foundations but they did not know the theatre of Wales. The presence of Hazel provided the intellectual and historical counterweight. She started with a critic writing for “Y Brython” in 1914. She gave us words from Lord Howard de Walden from 1944 and cited J O Francis from a radio talk that he gave in 1952. She provided extracts of her own writing from her book “Y Theatr Genedlaethol yng Nghymru.” Her chronicle of induction ended with the more recent Ed Thomas: “Is there a Welsh audience? Is there a theatrical community in Wales?...There is no Welsh audience, only a rag-bag of individuals, some bigoted, some enlightened, and others who just want a good night out.” The New Critics Programme led a few years later to an ironic conclusion. Then, and thereafter, it meant a lot to me. * * * * In November 2012 Wales Arts Review held its second Critics Round Table. Tim Price was there. John McGrath spoke about political theatre. Phil Morris led a panel to talk about Richard Burton. Hazel was there to add comments of concise acuteness. With the change of her place of work to the University of South Wales our paths did not cross in the way that they had in the Aberystwyth era. The last phase of our meetings took place in a particular location. I would come across her in the cafe of the National Library of Wales. Her biography of O M Edwards required an extensive period of research. She would say, mock-ruefully, that it was too big an undertaking at her stage of life. I would reply that a big challenge in the years of retirement was good and that anyway she was manifestly enjoying the task. The book itself proved to be a triumph. In 2021 “O.M.: Cofiant Syr Owen Morgan Edwards” won the Sir Ellis Griffith Memorial Prize 2020, awarded by the University of Wales. Had Wales a hundred scholars of the like of Hazel Walford Davies the public discourse would be very different. Hazel Walford Davies 1940 – 21 November 2025 |
Reviewed by: Adam Somerset |
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