David Gwilym James

David Gwilym James (25 September 1905 – 10 December 1968) was the second vice chancellor of the University of Southampton joining in October 1952 and remaining till 1965, the year being marked by university expansion in the United Kingdom following the strong increase in the post-war birth rate in the late 1940s peaking in 1947.

Early life He was born in Griffithstown, Monmouthshire, Wales. He was educated at West Monmouth School in Pontypool and then attended Aberystwyth University College, University College London and then Trinity College, Cambridge.

Student numbers in 1952 were about 1,000 with a staff of around 100. By 1963 student numbers had grown to 2,094. During James' tenure, in 1963 the Nuffield Theatre was opened on the main Highfield campus for both visiting and university performers. Also in James' tenure, the Robbins Report was published in 1963. This proposed that the number of students at English universities should rise from 150,000 to 170,000. Southampton set about increasing its students to 4,000, not by 1980 as planned, but by 1967 and James’ last two years as vice-chancellor set about reaching that target.

After Southampton he was a visiting lecturer at several institutions including Yale University from 1965 to 1966.

Personal life In 1931 he married Dillys Margaret Cledwyn (d. 1965) and they had one son and three daughters. In 1967 he married second Gwynneth Chegwidden. A notable friend of his was J. R. R. Tolkien.

Publications

Scepticism and Poetry, An Essay on the Poetic Imagination: 1937, reprinted 1980, Greenwood Press The Romantic Comedy, 1948, OUP, ASIN: B0010WHOVA The Life of Reason, The Life of Reason - [The English Augustans] - Hobbes, Locke and Bolingbroke, Pub: Longmans 1949 ASIN: B0006DGLGI Wordsworth and Tennyson (Warton Lecture, British Academy, 1950) Reprinted 1982 Haskell House Publishers Inc. Byron and Shelley (Byron Foundation Lecture, Univ. of Nottingham, 1951) Reprinted 1978, R West, The Dream of Learning, December 1951, OUP (Editor) The Universities and the Theatre, 1952 Matthew Arnold and the Decline of English Romanticism, 1961 The Dream of Prospero, 1967 Henry Sidgwick: Science and Faith in Victorian England (Riddell Memorial Lecture) OUP