Albert Evans-Jones

He was educated at Pwllheli Grammar School and the University College of North Wales at Bangor, where he graduated in 1916.

[3] After the war, Cynan entered college in Pwllheli to train for the ministry of the Presbyterian Church of Wales.

He was ordained at Penmaenmawr, Caernarfonshire, in 1920 where he served as minister until 1931 when he relinquished his calling having been appointed a tutor in the Extramural Department of the University College of North Wales specialising in Drama and Welsh Literature.

Whilst working in the university, Cynan lived in Menai Bridge, Anglesey, but in his best known poem he expressed a wish to retire to Aberdaron, Caernarfonshire,[4]

[1] He was commissioned to write an exemplary play for the National Eisteddfod in 1957 – his offering Absolom Fy Mab was accepted to great critical acclaim in Welsh dramatic circles as were his translations of English Language plays John Masefield's Good Friday and Norman Nicholson's The Old Man of the Mountain.

In 1931 he was appointed Reader of Welsh plays on behalf of the Lord Chamberlain, a post which he held till the abolition of censorship in 1968.

He was the First Archdruid to accept that the Gorsedd was an 18th-century invention by Iolo Morganwg and that it had no links to Welsh mythology or to the ancient Druids, thus healing rifts between the academic and ecclesiastical establishments and the Eisteddfod movement.

He won the Bardic Crown in 1921 at the Caernarfon National Eisteddfod for his poem Mab y Bwthyn ("A Cottage Son"), which recounted his experiences in the Great War.