In memoriam: Dwyryd Jones

Posted on Wednesday 23 September 2026

After stellar undergraduate years at Aberystwyth 1959-62, Dwyryd went to Oxford for his D.Phil. before taking up a position in the History Dept at the University of York in 1966.  An expert on trade and economy in the late 17^th and early 18^th centuries, Dwyryd’s intellectual interests took him far beyond the Europe of his doctoral work.  At York, he contributed significantly to the teaching of the intellectually demanding second-year undergraduate course ‘Issues in historical thought’ and also applied his broad geographic and cultural interests to the development of the challenging, third-year comparative history courses. Both of these were distinctive to York and helped make its undergraduate history degree one of the very best (not only) in the UK.  Something of a perfectionist, Dwyryd pursued a host of time-consuming leads from his doctoral thesis until, finally, producing the work by which he is perhaps best remembered by the wider, scholarly community War and Economy in the Age of William III and Marlborough, in 1988. Although pioneering in conception and original in argument, by the time his perfectionism permitted him to publish the book, over twenty years after he had received the doctorate on which it was based, the field had moved on and his contribution did not receive the recognition it undoubtedly deserved. There was, of course much more to Dwyryd than his life as historian and colleague. He was, first and foremost, a proud Welshman, giving expression to his Welsh identity whenever opportunity permitted. Another colleague, Bill Sheils, confirms the story of how Dwyryd, watching Wrexham play at York City, shouted instructions (or abuse) in Welsh at the Wrexham goalkeeper -  only to discover later that the man was born and raised in Liverpool and had (fortunately) not understood a word! At home, he was happiest conversing in his native tongue with his family and friends. He had a particular soft spot for, and encyclopaedic knowledge of, Wagner’s Ring Cycle and its interpreters. But his cultural preferences were no less capacious than his intellectual ones and Dwyryd saw no contradiction between his love of Grand Opera and that for the comedian Ken Dodd, widely regarded as the last great music hall entertainer and master of stand-up comedy. He often peppered our conversations with the latest hilarity derived from that great Liverpudlian comic. The abiding memory of Dwyryd Jones’s colleagues is of a learned, generous and deeply humane being, ever alert to the needs of others and quietly supportive of them as and when need required.

James Walvin & Simon Ditchfield