Dai Smith was born in 1945 in the Rhondda. He was educated in South Wales before reading modern history at Balliol College, Oxford and comparative literature at Columbia University, New York. He has been a lecturer at the Universities of Lancaster, Swansea and Cardiff, where he was awarded a Personal Chair in 1986, and was subsequently a Pro-Vice Chancellor at the University of Glamorgan. In addition to his academic career, he has also been a constant broadcaster on radio and television since the 1970s, and he became Head of Programmes (English language) in the 1990s at BBC Wales where he commissioned, presented and scripted a number of award-winning documentary programmes and other series. His many publications, which span books, articles and journalism, have centred on the dynamics - culture and society, politics and literature - of his native South Wales, and most recently have expanded into the form of biography (Raymond Williams: A Warrior's Tale, 2008), memoir (In The Frame: Memory in Society, 2010) and the novel (Dream On, 2013). Dai Smith was the founding Editor of the Library of Wales Series. He has led Arts Council Wales as its Chair since 2006. He holds a part-time Research Chair in the Cultural History of Wales at Swansea University. He is now writing more fiction.