Raymond Henry Williams

 Raymond Henry Williams
(31 August 1921 – 26 January 1988) was a Welsh academic, novelist and critic. He was an influential figure within the New Left and in wider culture. His writings on politics, culture, the mass media and literature are a significant contribution to the Marxist critique of culture and the arts. Some 750,000 copies of his books have sold in UK editions alone^[1] and there are many translations available. His work laid the foundations for the field of cultural studies and the cultural materialist approach.

World War II

Williams interrupted his education to serve in World War II. In winter 1940, he enlisted in the British Army, but stayed at Cambridge to take his exams in June 1941, the same month Germany invaded Russia. Joining the military was against the Communist party line at the time. According to Williams, his membership in the Communist Party lapsed without him ever formally resigning.^[9]
When Williams joined the army, he was assigned to the Royal Corps of Signals, which was the typical assignment for university undergraduates. He received some initial training in military communications, but was then reassigned to artillery and anti-tank weapons. He was viewed as officer material and served as an officer in the Anti-Tank Regiment of the Guards Armoured Division, 1941–1945, being sent into the early fighting in the Invasion of Normandy after the Normandy Landings (D-Day). In Politics and Letters he writes, "I don't think the intricate chaos of that Normandy fighting has ever been recorded".^[10] He commanded a unit of four tanks and mentions losing touch with two of them during fighting against Waffen-SS Panzer forces in the Bocage; he never discovered what happened to them due to a withdrawal of the troops.
He was part of the fighting from Normandy in 1944 through Belgium and Holland to Germany in 1945, where he was involved in the liberation of one of the smaller Nazi concentration camps, which was afterwards used to detain SS officers. He was also shocked to find that Hamburg had suffered saturation bombing by the Royal Air Force, not just of military targets and docks as they had been told.

Early publications

He made his reputation with Culture and Society, published in 1958, which was an immediate success. This was followed in 1961 by The Long Revolution. Williams's writings were taken up by the New Left and received a wide readership. He was also well known as a regular book reviewer for the Manchester Guardian newspaper. His years in adult education were an important experience and Williams was always something of an outsider at Cambridge University. Asked to contribute to a book called My Cambridge, he began his essay by saying, "It was never my Cambridge. That was clear from the start".[1

Novels

• Border Country, London, Chatto and Windus, 1960. reissued Hogarth Press, 1987.
• Second Generation, London, Chatto and Windus, 1964; reissued Hogarth Press, 1987.
• The Volunteers, London, Eyre-Methuen, 1978. Paperback edition, London, Hogarth Press, 1985.
• The Fight for Manod, London, Chatto and Windus, 1979. reissued Hogarth Press, 1987.
• Loyalties, London, Chatto and Windus, 1985.
• People of the Black Mountains, Volume 1: The Beginning, London, Chatto and Windus, 1989.
• People of the Black Mountains, Volume 2: The Eggs of the Eagle, London, Chatto and Windus, 1990.

• Drama

• Koba (1966) in Modern Tragedy, London, Chatto and Windus
• A Letter from the Country, BBC Television, April 1966, Stand, 12(1971), pp17–34
• Public Enquiry, BBC Television, 15 March 1967, Stand, 9 (1967), pp15–53

• Short stories

• Red Earth, Cambridge Front, no. 2 (1941)
• Sack Labourer, in English Short Story 1, W. Wyatt (ed.) London, Collins, 1941
• Sugar, in R. Williams, M. Orrom, M.J. Craig (eds) Outlook: a Selection of Cambridge Writings, Cambridge, 1941, pp. 7–14.
• This Time, in New Writing and Daylight, no. 2, 1942-3, J. Lehmann (ed.) London, Collins, 1943, pp. 158–64.
• A Fine Room to be Ill In, in English Story 8, W. Wyatt (ed.) London, 1948.
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