Jack Jones was a Welsh miner, Trade Union official, politician, novelist and playwright.
Dame Edith Margaret Emily Ashcroft, known professionally as Peggy Ashcroft, was an English actress whose career spanned more than 60 years.
Maesteg is a town and community in Bridgend County Borough, Wales. Maesteg lies at the northernmost end of the Llynfi Valley, close to the border with Neath Port Talbot. In 2011, Maesteg had a population of 20,612. The English translation of Maesteg is 'fair field'.
The Corn Is Green is a 1938 semi-autobiographical play by Welsh dramatist and actor Emlyn Williams. The play premiered in London at the Duchess Theatre in September 1938; with Sybil Thorndike as Miss Moffat and Williams himself portraying Morgan Evans, the West End production ran in all for 600 performances. The original Broadway production starred Ethel Barrymore and premiered at the National Theatre in November 1940, running for 477 performances.
"Ar Hyd y Nos" is a Welsh song sung to a tune that was first recorded in Edward Jones' Musical and Poetical Relics of the Welsh Bards (1784). The most commonly sung Welsh lyrics were written by John Ceiriog Hughes (1832-1887), and have been translated into several languages, including English and Breton. One of the earliest English versions, to different Welsh lyrics by one John Jones, was by Thomas Oliphant in 1862.
A pit village, colliery village or mining village is a settlement built by colliery owners to house their workers. The villages were built on the coalfields of Great Britain during the Industrial Revolution where new coal mines were developed in isolated or unpopulated areas. Such settlements were developed by companies for the incoming workers.
Frank Richards a.k.a. Francis Philip Woodruff DCM, MM was a World War I soldier and author. Born in Monmouthshire, he was orphaned at the age of nine, and was then brought up by his aunt and uncle in the Blaina area of the South Wales Valleys in industrial Monmouthshire. The uncle, his mother's twin brother, and surnamed Richards, adopted Frank who then changed his surname. During the 1890s Frank Richards worked as coal miner and joined Royal Welch Fusiliers in 1901, serving in the British Empire forces in British India under the British Raj and Burma from 1902 to 1909, after which he transferred to the reserves. He is best known as the author of one of the most widely acclaimed memoirs of the Great War to be written by a ranker, Old Soldiers Never Die.
Rachel Thomas OBE, was a Welsh character actress.
The Price of Coal is a two-part television drama written by Barry Hines and directed by Ken Loach first broadcast as part of the Play for Today series in 1977. Set at the fictional Milton Colliery, near Barnsley in South Yorkshire, the episodes contrast "efforts made to cosmetically improve the pit in preparation for a royal visit and the target-conscious safety shortcuts that precipitate a fatal accident ".
The South Wales Miners' Federation (SWMF), nicknamed "The Fed", was a trade union for coal miners in South Wales. It survives as the South Wales Area of the National Union of Mineworkers.
Robert Adams was a British Guyanese actor of stage and screen. He was the founder and director of the Negro Repertory Arts Theatre, one of the first professional black theatre companies in Britain, and became the world's first black television actor when he appeared in Theatre Parade: Scenes From Hassan on BBC TV in 1937. He was also the first Black actor to play a Shakespearian role on television, in 1947.
Frederick Penrose "Pen" Tennyson was a British film director whose promising career was cut short when he died in a plane crash. Tennyson gained experience as an assistant director to Alfred Hitchcock in several of his British films during the 1930s. Tennyson directed three films between 1939 and his death in 1941.
The Stars Look Down is a British film from 1940, based on A. J. Cronin's 1935 novel of the same title, about injustices in a mining town in North East England. The film, co-scripted by Cronin and directed by Carol Reed, stars Michael Redgrave as Davey Fenwick and Margaret Lockwood as Jenny Sunley. The film is a New York Times Critics' Pick and is listed in The New York Times Guide to the Best 1,000 Movies Ever Made.
Roger Tiley is a Welsh documentary photographer. His work on documenting the coal mines of Wales and America has been used extensively in publications. Specifically during the UK miners' strike (1984–1985).
Sanders of the River is a 1935 British film directed by the Hungarian-British director, Zoltán Korda, based on the stories of Edgar Wallace. It is set in Colonial Nigeria. The lead Nigerian characters were played by African Americans Paul Robeson and Nina Mae McKinney. The film proved a significant commercial and critical success, giving Korda the first of his four nominations for Best Film at the Venice Film Festival.
Love on the Dole is a 1941 British drama film starring Deborah Kerr and Clifford Evans. It was adapted from the novel of the same name by Walter Greenwood. It was the first English-made feature film to show English police wielding batons against a crowd.
Convoy is a 1940 British war film, produced by Ealing Studios, directed by Pen Tennyson and starring Clive Brook, John Clements and Edward Chapman. Convoy was Tennyson's last film before he was killed in an aircraft crash, while serving in the Royal Navy.
The Silent Village is a 1943 British propaganda short film in the form of a drama documentary, made by the Crown Film Unit and directed by Humphrey Jennings. The film was named one of the top 5 documentaries of 1943 by the National Board of Review. It was inspired by the Lidice massacre in Czech Republic in June 1942.
Blue Scar is a 1949 British drama film directed by documentary filmmaker Jill Craigie. Set in a Welsh village where the mine has recently been nationalised, it focuses on the relationship between Olwen Williams, a miner's daughter who leaves the village to live in London, and Tom Thomas, who dedicates his life to working in the mine. With Craigie's background in documentary films with a social message, Blue Scar was designed to raise questions about the value of nationalising the coal industry. It was the only non-documentary film Craigie directed.
