Ffransis George Payne (1900-1992)

Ffransis G. Payne, who died at the age of ninety-one on 21 August 1992, was born in Kington, Herefordshire, where his father, a native of Cardiff, had opened a draper's shop in 1898. His childhood was spent in this small Border town which he was later to describe so memorably in some of the essays in Chwaryddion Crwydrol ac Ysgrifau eraill. This volume, which brought him to the attention of the Welsh-reading public in 1943, was hailed as a new Welsh classic by no less a critic than Saunders Lewis. Its vivid descriptions of Border life have been favourably compared with those of other authors, such as Geraint Goodwin, Raymond Williams and Bruce Chatwin, who have written about the Marches. Ffransis Payne, however, chose to write in Welsh, a language he had decided to learn as a young lad. The circumstances of this decision, which have some of the hallmarks of conversion, are worth recording since they help to explain his subsequent commitment to the study of the past

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