Richard Llewellyn
Richard Dafydd Vivian Llewellyn Lloyd, known by his pen name Richard Llewellyn, was an English novelist of Welsh descent, who is best remembered for his 1939 novel How Green Was My Valley, which chronicles life in a coal mining village in the South Wales Valleys.
Biography
Richard Herbert Vivian Lloyd was born in Hendon, Middlesex in 1906, the second child and only son of William Llewellyn Lloyd, a hotel clerk and later the assistant secretary to a club, and Sarah Anne, née Thomas. Only after his death was it discovered that Llewellyn's claim that he was born in St Davids, West Wales, was false.In the U.S., Llewellyn won the National Book Award for favourite novel of 1940, voted by members of the American Booksellers Association.
He lived a peripatetic existence, travelling widely throughout his life. Before World War II he spent periods working in hotels, wrote a play, worked as a coal miner and produced his best-known novel. During World War II he rose to the rank of Captain in the Welsh Guards. His sister Gwladys and her two daughters were killed during the bombing of London, in June 1944. Following the war he worked as a journalist, covering the Nuremberg Trials, and then as a screenwriter for MGM. During his lifetime, he lived in a variety of countries, including Italy, China, Brazil, Argentina, Kenya and Israel, in addition to Britain and Ireland.
Llewellyn married twice: his first wife was Nona Theresa Catherine Sonsteby, whom he married in 1952 and divorced in 1968; his second wife was editor Susan Frances Heimann, whom he married in 1974.
Richard Llewellyn died of a heart attack in St. Vincent's Hospital, Dublin on 30 November 1983.