JOHN JONES TALSARN
Pregethwr Y Bobl / The People’s Preacher
By Alan C. Clifford
Charenton Reformed Publishing
306 pages. £9.99
ISBN 978 0 955 516 580
In mid-19th-century Wales, the subject of Dr. Clifford’s book made for himself, in the opinion of at least one first-hand observer, ‘a deeper home in the affections of his fel-low-countrymen than any of his mighty predecessors or contemporaries’.
Given that three of the greatest figures in all of Welsh history — Daniel Rowland, Howell Harris and William Williams Pantycelyn — graced the previous generation, and that among John Jones’s contemporaries can be listed John Elias, Thomas Charles of Bala and Henry Rees, such a statement needs careful weighing. It is a tribute to Dr. Clifford’s skill in marshalling his variegated material that by the end of this briskly decisive and compelling little volume we have no reason to doubt its accuracy. If John Jones is largely forgotten today, it is a mark of our sad, distracted age: an age which has seen the decimation of church and chapel life in Wales.
