Biography
Howells is the son of the late Glanville Howells, a Communist lorry driver, and of Joan Glenys Howells. Born in Merthyr Tydfil, Wales and raised in Penywaun near Aberdare in the Cynon Valley, he is a former pupil of Mountain Ash Grammar School.
Howells went to Hornsey College of Art,which now is Middlesex University, where he was active in the famous May 1968 student occupation, and was the first protester to breach the Metropolitan Police cordon at the demonstration against the Vietnam War outside the US Embassy in Grosvenor Square in 1968.
Howell featured as a student leader at Hornsey College of Art in director John Goldschmidt's film 'Our Live Experiment is worth more than 3,000 Textbooks', made for Granada Television and shown on the ITV Network.
Attended Cambridge College of Arts and Technology 1971-74 where he studied Jt Hons Degree and was awarded a 2:1 degree which allowed him to follow post-graduate studies in history. Howells later obtained a Ph.D. from the University of Warwick in 1979, for a thesis entitled A view from below : tradition, experience and nationalism in the South Wales coalfield, 1937-1957.
Read more about this topic: Kim Howells
Famous quotes containing the word biography:
“In how few words, for instance, the Greeks would have told the story of Abelard and Heloise, making but a sentence of our classical dictionary.... We moderns, on the other hand, collect only the raw materials of biography and history, “memoirs to serve for a history,” which is but materials to serve for a mythology.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Had Dr. Johnson written his own life, in conformity with the opinion which he has given, that every man’s life may be best written by himself; had he employed in the preservation of his own history, that clearness of narration and elegance of language in which he has embalmed so many eminent persons, the world would probably have had the most perfect example of biography that was ever exhibited.”
—James Boswell (1740–95)
“The best part of a writer’s biography is not the record of his adventures but the story of his style.”
—Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977)