Welsh nationalist tutored Prince Charles
PROMOTED USE OF LANGUAGE
Edward ( Tedi) Millward, who has died aged 89, was a prominent Welsh Nationalist, anti- monarchist and academic at the University of Aberystwyth who was taken aback when asked if he would teach Welsh to Prince Charles ahead of his investiture as Prince of Wales in July 1969.
Six years before, Millward, a Plaid Cymru activist and co- founder of Cymdeithas yr Iaith Gymraeg (the Welsh Language Society), had tried in vain to get himself arrested during the “Trefechan Bridge” protest, when members of the society tried to bring Aberystwyth to a halt by staging a sit-in.
The event marked the start of the upsurge in Welsh nationalism that saw the first Plaid Cymru politician elected to parliament in 1966 and Welsh established as an official legal language in 1967.
During the 1963 protest the police clearly had orders not to intervene, but Millward reckoned that his involvement had earned him a place in their “black book.”
For that and for ideological reasons he had been reluctant to become the prince’s tutor.
The job, he claimed later, had been “forced” upon him: “I wasn’t in favour of him becoming Prince of Wales. And he knew it.”
But Millward decided to treat the prince the same as any other student, and ended up becoming fond of his young charge: “I found him intelligent and quite charming. We became quite close.”
In the Netflix hit series The Crown, Millward, played by Mark Lewis Jones, is seen tearing into the prince (Josh O’connor) for not taking his studies seriously. In reality, as Millward remembered it, they never argued and Charles was a diligent student — too diligent for some of his neighbours in his hall of residence, who complained that they could not get to sleep at night with him practising.
“He really worked quite hard,” Millward said. “He started from nothing, so learning Welsh was difficult. I had a one- on- one tutorial with him every week. He was very enthusiastic and his accent ended up being quite good.”
They kept in touch and remained close, the prince sending Millward Christmas cards and consulting him when he had to make a speech in Welsh.
Millward’s daughter Llio, a singer and actress, has said she was touched when the prince sent a handwritten letter after hearing that her father was in hospital with a life-threatening illness.
Even so, Millward had declined to attend his protege’s investiture at Caernarfon Castle and, though invited to the prince’s nuptials with Lady Diana Spencer in 1981, he turned that invitation down, too.
He subsequently met the Princess of Wales a few times when she accompanied her husband on visits to the Principality, observing that “they didn’t seem to get on at all.”
Millward did not like being photographed with the prince in public, but he kept a picture of himself writing “Bore da,” Welsh for “Good morning,” on a blackboard during a session with his royal pupil.
Edward Glynne Millward was born June 28, 1930. He studied at the University College of South Wales (now Cardiff University) before becoming a lecturer in Welsh at the University College of Wales, Aberystwyth.
It was a radio lecture by the great Welsh critic Saunders Lewis early in 1962 on the fate of the Welsh language that led to his becoming a political activist: “It was like a call to arms … Welsh wasn’t spoken publicly and was being badly neglected. Many scholars like myself were worried: Lewis’s lecture inspired us to do something about it.”
He became active in Plaid Cymru, and twice ran for the party but without success. In 1966, he was elected vice- president of Plaid, but stepped down in 1968 when asked to teach Welsh to Prince Charles.
Millward continued to teach at Aberystwyth and, as Plaid’s spokesman on water policy, advocated non- violent direct action against the construction of new reservoirs in the Principality.
In the early 1980s he supported a successful campaign for a Welsh language television station.
In Netflix’s The Queen, Millward’s character is seen inviting his royal pupil to his home for tea. But, Millward observed, that would never have happened, “because my wife Sylvia was not in favour of him.”
She survives him with their daughter. A son died in 2016.