The Real Gareth Jones: great nephew of famous journalist to give Hastings talk
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Hastings writer Philip Colley will give a talk on 7 November at The White Rock Hotel about his great uncle, the famous Welsh journalist Gareth Jones.
In his short, remarkable lifetime, Gareth Jones worked for Lloyd George, flew with Adolf Hitler and caused an international storm in 1933 by revealing a hidden Soviet famine.
Two years later, he was captured and shot by bandits in Inner Mongolia a day before his 30th birthday.
He was then largely forgotten by all but his close family.
Today, however, although Jones has regained worldwide recognition, largely thanks to the movie Mr Jones starring James Norton, his life has become shrouded in myth and fictions, and increasingly marked by controversy.
What did he really expose in March 1933? Was he sympathetic to Nazism?
Was he a spy?
For the first time, his great-nephew Philip Colley examines in detail what happened during Jones’s now-fabled walk through the snowy Soviet countryside.
'Gareth Jones was a brilliant Welsh journalist and a prolific chronicler of his times, including the rise of the Nazis,' says Colley.
'Fluent in five languages, he was a universalist, a pacifist and an insatiable traveller. Everyone who knew him expected him to reach the stars.
'But three bullets ended that. Their sound echoed through my family for decades. Those who had known him bore his loss stoically. I grew up inspired by, and in awe of, a man I could never meet.’
Drawing upon previously overlooked archival evidence, Colley says his illustrated talk will show that his great-uncle’s experiences were very different from their portrayal in both Mr Jones and contemporary parliamentary debates.
'I will finally allow my great-uncle to speak for himself, distinguishing the documentary evidence from the later myths surrounding his work.'
The Real Gareth Jones - Separating Fact from Fiction is at The White Rock Hotel, Hastings, TN34 1JU at 2.30pm on Saturday 7 November
- Entry is free. Event page: https://fb.me/e/8f6JUb2by