Professor Dafydd Jenkins

The National Library of Wales is very glad to announce that its oldest reader, Dafydd Jenkins who is one hundred years old, will be present at the historic centenary celebrations on Friday 15 July 2011.


Emeritus Professor Dafydd Jenkins was born 1911 and is a critic and legal historian. He was born in London to Ceredigion parents, attended Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, and was called to the Bar in 1934. He worked as a barrister in Carmarthen and in 1938 was secretary of the campaign to have the Welsh language recognised in Court. He’s been a member and chairman of several organisations concerned with agriculture and with the promotion and use of the Welsh language. 

From 1965 lectured in the Law Department at Aberystwyth and held the chair in Legal History and Welsh Law, 1975-1978, until his retirement. Professor Jenkins published several important works on the Welsh Laws, including Cyfraith Hywel (Llandysul, 1970), Celtic Law Papers (Brussels, 1973), and The Law of Hywel Dda: law texts from Medieval Wales (Llandysul, 1986). He’s also published travel books in Welsh about Denmark and Sweden as well as other books and pamphlets on as diverse subjects as the Welsh novel, the famous political booklet, Tân yn Llŷn (Aberystwyth, 1937) and Law for Co-operatives (Oxford, 1958). As a young man he also founded and co-edited the Welsh periodical, Heddiw (Today) with Aneirin Talfan Davies.

 
He is presently resident at Pennal View residential home, near Blaenpennal, Tregaron.