The original entry for 'Will Jones' on this site gave very little to go on: an actor and writer of drama, born somewhere in Wales. Reader comments left on the old page, however, pointed to a specific and well-documented figure: William Samuel Jones, known throughout Wales as Wil Sam, one of the most distinctive Welsh-language playwrights of the twentieth century.
William Samuel Jones was born in Llanystumdwy, Gwynedd, on 28th May 1920, and spent his entire life in the Eifionydd area of north Wales. He trained and worked as a motor mechanic, eventually running his own garage in Llanystumdwy, before turning to writing. He was a conscientious objector during the Second World War and worked in food distribution rather than serve in the armed forces.
From 1963 he began writing plays for Theatr y Gegin in Criccieth, a small theatre he helped establish with his brother Elis Gwyn, who produced many of his works. That year also saw the publication of 'Pum Drama Fer', a collection of five of his short plays, after which he gave up the garage to write full-time, becoming one of the first people to make a living solely from writing in the Welsh language. His plays, noted for their comedy and use of dialect, drew comparisons to the work of Samuel Beckett and N. F. Simpson. From the mid-1970s he also wrote extensively for Welsh-language television, radio and newspapers.
Jones's contribution to Welsh theatre was recognised with a BAFTA Cymru award in 1995, an honorary MA from Aberystwyth University in 2003, and an honorary fellowship from Bangor University in 2004. He died on 15th November 2007, aged 87.