The Writers of Wales Database

GRIFFITHS, RICHARD

French scholar, critic and historian. Born in Barry, 1935, Richard Griffiths studied French literature at King’s College Cambridge, and then did research, mainly in Paris, on French Renaissance drama. He then took up university teaching. Fellowships at Selwyn College Cambridge and Brasenose College Oxford were followed by the Chairs of French at University College Cardiff and at King’s College London, from the last of which he retired in 2000, and returned to Wales. He was a member of the Welsh Arts Council from 1980–86 (becoming Vice–Chair of the Literature Committee), one of the Welsh members of  the General Advisory Council of the BBC 1986-90, and a member of the Higher Education Funding Council for Wales 1992-97. He has written widely on French literature and politics, on British political history, and on religious topics, and is currently preparing a book on Welsh entrepreneurs of the late nineteenth century. He is a priest in the Church in Wales, and curate of Llantrisant.

Selected Publications:
The Reactionary Revolution: The Catholic Revival in French Literature 1870-1914 (Constable, 1966)
Marshal Pétain (Constable, 1970)
The Dramatic Technique of Montchrestien: Rhetoric and Style in French Renaissance Tragedy (Oxford University Press, 1970)
Fellow Travellers of the Right: British Enthusiasts for Nazi Germany 1933-1939 (Constable, 1983)
The Use of Abuse: Polemics of the Dreyfus Affair and Its Aftermath (Berg, 1992)
Patriotism Perverted: Captain Ramsay, the Right Club, and British Anti-Semitism 1939-40 (Constable, 1998)
An Intelligent Person’s Guide to Fascism (Duckworth, 2000)
The Bible in the Renaissance (Ashgate, 2001)
Fascism (Continuum, 2005)
The Entrepreneurial Society of the Rhondda Valleys, 1840-1920: Power and Influence in the Porth-Pontypridd Region (University of Wales Press, 2010)