Kenneth Hurlstone Jackson (1 November 1909 – 20 February 1991) was an English linguist and a translator who specialised in the Celtic languages.
[1] Born at Beddington, Surrey, England, he was the son of Alan Stuart Jackson and his wife, Lucy Hurlstone.
He undertook war service with the Uncommon Languages section of British censorship (where he said he learned Japanese in three weeks).
His writings are always insightful and stimulating, often the only sources in English for their subject, and even where the reader may wish to disagree with his conclusions, the weight of his erudition and mastery of the early Celtic material must be taken into account.
There is also the advantage for those not familiar with the Celtic languages that much of his work is in an English-language medium, although this can make an appreciation of Celtica rather unbalanced, as an understanding of sources in at least Welsh can help develop a larger picture, where different opinions are represented.
His proposers were Douglas Grant, Evelyn Ebsworth, Neil Campbell, Arnold Beevers, and Sir Thomas Malcolm Knox.