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Nassau William Senior (1790-1864), lawyer, author and political economist, was born at Compton Beauchamp, Berkshire, on 26 September 1790. He enrolled at Eton College in 1803 and entered Magdalen College, Oxford in 1806, graduating with a first in Classics in 1811. By this time he had already begun his career in Lincoln's Inn and it was around this time that he began writing reviews and articles of a legal or literary nature for the Quarterly Review. In 1823 he joined the recently formed Political Economy Club, remaining an active member for the next forty years. Senior was Drummond Professor of Political Economy at Oxford, 1826-1829 and 1847-1852, was a member of the Royal Commission of Education, 1858-1861, and acted as an advisor to successive Whig administrations. He became involved in several social concerns, including the rights of factory workers and the socio-economic problems of the poor. In 1837 he published his Letters on the Factory Act as it Affects the Cotton Manufacture and, in 1841, the parliamentary Report on the Condition of the Handloom Weavers. He held the then unorthodox view that government intervention in the form of capital investment should be carried out in an attempt to relieve the problems of the poor in Britain and Ireland. Senior's lifelong friendship with the political thinker and historian Alexis de Tocqueville began when the two men met in London in 1833. Senior travelled widely through Europe, mainly France and Italy, but also to the Middle East, North Africa, Ireland, and Wales and Scotland. Senior married Mary Charlotte Mair in 1821; they had a son Nassau John Senior (1822-1891) and a daughter, Mary Charlotte Mair Senior (1825-1907), latterly Mrs M. C. M. Simpson. He died in Kensington on 4 June 1864. After his death Mrs Simpson published many of his journals.

Professor Richard George Thomas, literary critic and editor, was born in the mining village of Pontlotyn, Glamorgan, in 1914. He was educated at the University College of South Wales and Monmouthshire, Cardiff, where he graduated in English. Following a period spent in Iceland during the Second World War, he returned to Wales in 1946 to teach medieval and eighteenth century literature, and was appointed Professor of English Language and Literature at University College Cardiff, in 1967. His main academic interest was the study of the work of the poet Edward Thomas (1878-1917). His monograph, Edward Thomas, in the Writers of Wales series, was published in 1972, followed by his edition of The Collected Poems of Edward Thomas (Oxford : Clarendon Press, 1978), Edward Thomas: A Portrait (Oxford University Press, 1985), and Edward Thomas: Selected Letters (Oxford University Press, 1995). R. George Thomas died at Cardiff, 23 February 2001.

Albert James Sylvester (1889-1989) served as Principal Private Secretary to David Lloyd George from 1923 until his death in March 1945. A native of Staffordshire, Sylvester served as private secretary to the Secretary to the Committee of Imperial Defence, 1914-1921, to the Secretary of the War Cabinet and the Cabinet, 1916-1921, to the Secretary of the Imperial War Cabinet, 1917, to the British Secretary of the Peace Conference, 1919, and to three successive Prime Ministers, 1921-3: D. Lloyd George, Andrew Bonar Law and Stanley Baldwin. He ran Lloyd George's private office in London. After Lloyd George's death, A. J. Sylvester earned his living as a member of Lord Beaverbrook's staff from 1945 until 1948, and spent a further year as unpaid assistant to Liberal Party leader, E. Clement Davies. In 1947, he published The Real Lloyd George, based on his diaries. In 1949, he retired from political life, and moved to a farm at Corsham, Wiltshire, England. His ambition to publish a full-scale autobiography, upon which he was actively engaged in extreme old age, never came to fruition. His papers provide an insight into the life of Lloyd George after his fall from power in 1922.

Emlyn Williams (1905-1987) from Mostyn, Flintshire, was an actor, writer and playwright of international renown. He was born as George Emlyn Williams and started using the name Emlyn Williams in 1927. With the assistance of his French teacher, Sarah Grace Cooke (d. 1964), he won a scholarship to Christ Church College, Oxford, in 1923 (the events were later fictionalised in 'The Corn is Green'). Upon graduating, he pursued a successful acting career, appearing on the stage in 'The Frightened Lady', and becoming a mainstay of the British film industry in the 1930s, working on Hitchcock's 'Jamaica Inn' and other films, writing and appearing in 'The Last Days of Dolwyn' (1949). He wrote and produced numerous stage plays, including 'A Murder Has Been Arranged' (1930), 'Night Must Fall' (1935), 'The Corn is Green' (1938), 'The Wind of Heaven' (1945), and 'Accolade' (1951), and adaptations of Turgenev's 'A Month in the Country' (1957), Ibsen's 'The Master Builder' (1964), and created one-man shows from the works of Saki, Dylan Thomas and Charles Dickens; many of these were reworked as TV plays and films. His stage appearances continued in London, New York and elsewhere. He continued to make TV and film appearances from the 1950s into the 1980s, notably in 'The L-shaped Room' (1962), and 'Emlyn Williams as Charles Dickens' (1983). He also wrote 'George, An Early Autobiography' (1961), 'Emlyn: an early autobiography, 1927-1935' (1974), a non-fiction account of the Moors Murders, 'Beyond Belief' (1967), and the novels 'Headlong' (1980) and 'Dr Crippen's Diary' (1987). He was married to Mary Marjorie (Molly) Carus-Wilson (née O'Shann) (d. 1970) in 1935, and had two sons, Alan and Brook. He was awarded the CBE in 1962. He had many actor friends, including Richard Burton, Noël Coward, John Gielgud, Sybil Thorndike and Lillian Gish.

Glanmor Williams, historian, was born in Dowlais, Glamorgan, 5 May 1920. In 1945 he was appointed lecturer in history at the University of Wales, Swansea, and was Professor of History from 1957 until his retirement in 1982. Glanmor Williams was Chairman of the Ancient Monuments Board (Wales), 1986-1990.

His main field of research has been the Protestant establishment in Wales during the Reformation, and his volume The Welsh Church from Conquest to Reformation was published in 1962 and Welsh Reformation Essays in 1966. He was regarded as 'the chief authority on early modern Wales' and was the general editor of Glamorgan County History. Glanmor Williams was appointed a Fellow of the British Academy in 1986, was presented with a medal of the Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion in 1991, and knighted in 1995. He died 24 February 2005.

Professor David Gwyn Williams (1904-1990) was a poet, novelist and translator. He was born at Port Talbot, Glamorgan, and attended the University College of Wales, Aberystwyth, and Jesus College, Oxford. He lectured at the Universities of Cairo, Alexandria, Benghazi, and Istanbul, 1935-1969, becoming Professor of English Language and Literature. He then lived in his grandfather's house in Trefenter, Cardiganshire, until 1983, when he moved to Aberystwyth. He was married with five children, and died in 1990. He wrote a variety of works, including translations of Welsh poetry into English, collected as To Look For a Word (Llandysul, 1976); novels including This Way to Lethe (London, 1962) and The Avocet (Swansea, 1970); poetry, Inns of Love (Swansea, 1970), Foundation Stock (Llandysul, 1974), Choose Your Stranger (Port Talbot, 1979) and Y Ddefod Goll (Port Talbot, 1980); an adaptation of Troelus a Chresyd (Llandysul, 1976); Person and Persona (Cardiff, 1978), a collection of Shakespearean studies; An Introduction to Welsh Literature (Cardiff, 1978); The Land Remembers (London, 1977), based on scripts for a BBC TV series; an autobiography, ABC of (D.) G. W. (Llandysul, 1981); and four travel books.