Richard Hughes
His full name was Richard Arthur Warren Hughes OBE (19/4/1900 – 28/4/1976). He was born in Weybridge, Surrey, the son of Arthur Hughes, a civil servant, and his mother was Louisa Grace Warren who had grown up in Jamaica. He was educated at a public school called Charter House, and went on to Oriel college in Oxford.
He was a poet, playwright, novelist and literary critic contemporary with many famous people of his day. He published poems and stories in various magazines but his first play "The Sisters Tragedy" (1922) crowned his career at the University.
He had a family connection to Wales and first came here when he was 8 years old and fell in love with the country. When he was 16 years old and a pupil at Charter House he was able to come to Harlech to stay with Robert Graves and get a small cottage by Maes y Neuadd - the Little School where he spent time every school holiday. He had a lonely family life after losing a brother and sister when he was a two-year-old child and losing his father when he was six. He had a lonely upbringing with his mother.
Richard Hughes wrote a variety of poetry, plays and children's stories but the book that brought him fame was "A High Wind in Jamaica" in 1929. Other of his novels were "In Hazard", "Fox in the Attic" and "The Wooden Shepherdess.”
In 1932 he married the artist Frances Bazley and lived for a few years in Llacharn Castle, Carmarthenshire where Augustus John was a frequent guest and also Dylan Thomas and his wife Caitlin. This is where he wrote his second novel "In Hazard" in 1938.
During the Second World War he worked as a civil servant with the Navy. In the 50s he collaborated on a volume of the Official History of the War - a work which can be seen in the National Library. He lectured in London intermittently until 1956 before coming back to Ardudwy. In 1946 he was living with his wife and their five children in Mor Edrin, where he spent many years on the edge of the beach at Yr Ynys across the river from Portmeirion.
He was a faithful warden at Llanfihangel Church, and he would read a lesson in Welsh almost every Sunday. He died in 1976 and the family put up a beautiful stained glass window opposite the organ to remember him. This was a window showing Tecwyn Sant bringing Christianity to this area - Ardudwy, in the sixth century.