Raymond Williams was born in the Welsh border village of Pandy in 1921. After the war he began an influential career in education with the Extra Mural Department at Oxford University. His life- long concern with the interface between social development and cultural process marked him out as one of the most perceptive and influential intellectual figures of his generation. He returned to Cambridge as a Lecturer in 1961 and was appointed its first Professor of Drama in 1974. His best- known publications include Culture and Society (1958), The Long Revolution(1961), The Country and the City (1973), Keywords (1976) and Marxism and Literature (1977).

'I do not think that I have ever been so moved by a modern novel as I was by this tremendously exciting and beautifully written work... I know that it has made me take stock of my own position, and cannot doubt that it is a great novel.' Dennis Potter

Raymond Williams was born in the Welsh border village of Pandy in 1921. After the war he began an influential career in education with the Extra Mural Department at Oxford University. His life- long concern with the interface between social development and cultural process marked him out as one of the most perceptive and influential intellectual figures of his generation. He returned to Cambridge as a Lecturer in 1961 and was appointed its first Professor of Drama in 1974. His best- known publications include Culture and Society (1958), The Long Revolution(1961), The Country and the City (1973), Keywords (1976) and Marxism and Literature (1977).

'I do not think that I have ever been so moved by a modern novel as I was by this tremendously exciting and beautifully written work... I know that it has made me take stock of my own position, and cannot doubt that it is a great novel.' Dennis Potter