Acting Wales

Peter Stead is a writer, broadcaster and historian. He is a Visiting Professor at the University of Glamorgan, having previously been a Senior Lecturer in History at the University of Wales, Swansea. He has twice been a year long Visiting Fulbright Fellow in the USA, first at Wellesley College, Mass. and then at the University of North Carolina, Wilmington. He is the author of Film and the Working Class; The Feature Film in British and American Society (Routledge 1989) and biographical studies of the actor Richard Burton (Seren 1991), television writer Dennis Potter (Seren 1993), and the footballer Ivor Allchurch (Christopher Davies 1998). Previously he had jointly edited and contributed to University of Wales Press volumes of essays on aspects of the nation’s popular culture, Heart and Soul, The Character of Welsh Rugby (1998), a sequel More Heart and Soul (1999), For Club and Country; Welsh Football Greats (2000) and Hymns and Arias: Great Welsh Voices (2001). He has contributed essays on labour and cultural history to many other volumes and journals. As a broadcaster he has presented both television and radio programmes in Wales and radio programmes for BBC Radio Four throughout the UK. He comments regularly on Welsh sport, politics and culture. For many years he has represented Wales on the Radio Four series Round Britain Quiz, a competition Wales has won for four of the last five years. He is a Board member of Sgrîn, the Welsh Media Agency, and chairs its Production Advisory (Lottery) Committee. He is Chairman of the Swansea Arts Forum and was a member of the Government Panel that chose Liverpool as the UK capital of Culture 2008. His great interests are Sport, Theatre, Cinema, Opera and, having visited over 90 countries, Travel.