Acclaimed Welsh novelist and poet Lloyd Jones dies aged 74

Welsh novelist, poet and translator Lloyd Jones has died at the age of 74.

Jones, who was brought up on Bryn Clochydd farm in Gwytherin near Llanrwst, was widely regarded as one of Wales’ most distinctive and adventurous literary voices, writing in both Welsh and English.

After graduating in Welsh and English from Bangor University, he began his career in journalism, working as a reporter and newspaper editor in north Wales before turning increasingly to creative writing.

His first novel in English, Mr Vogel, was published in 2004 and won the McKitterick Prize. The book was inspired by a walk around Wales he undertook in 2002 while recovering from alcoholism.

He followed this with Mr Cassini, which won the Wales Book of the Year Prize in 2007.

Jones also produced a series of acclaimed Welsh-language novels, including Y Dŵr (2009), set in a post-apocalyptic rural Welsh landscape shaped by climate change, and Y Daith (2014), a semi-fantastical narrative centred on a journey along Offa’s Dyke.

Alongside his fiction, Jones was an accomplished poet, translator and photographer. His photographic work was exhibited in galleries across Wales in recent years, including MOMA Machynlleth and Storiel in Bangor.

Nation.Cymru’s Jon Gower said: “Lloyd Jones was one of the most artistically adventurous writers in Wales, a singular talent and a man blessed with an incredible zest for life,” he said.

“His prize-winning and peregrinating novel Mr Vogel is one of the great prose works of Wales in recent times, but his output ranged very widely.”

Jon observed that that Jones’ work spanned novels, memoir and poetry, often drawing on his upbringing on a remote farm in north Wales.

He was also praised as a gifted translator, most notably for his English version of Angharad Price’s acclaimed Welsh-language novel O! Tyn y Gorchudd, published as The Life of Rebecca Jones.

Angharad said she would always value both his work and their long friendship.

“I will be forever grateful to Lloyd for translating O! Tyn y Gorchudd,” she said.

“But even more than that, I’m grateful for having enjoyed his company over the last twenty years, for our conversations over cups of tea as he talked about his latest creative projects and showed me his latest photographs taken on his wanderings across Wales.”

Professor Gerwyn Williams, who taught Jones’ work at Bangor University for many years, described his novel Y Dŵr as a modern classic.

“His passing is a great loss for the literature of Wales in both languages,” he said.

Throughout his career, Jones’ work moved freely between languages, genres and artistic forms, reflecting a restless creativity that made him one of the most distinctive voices in contemporary Welsh literature.