by John Hartley

One wet January I happened to attend a meeting of the Newman Association – a Catholic group concerned with ecumenism. Long tailbacks on the motorway meant the guest speaker, making his way from Birmingham, was delayed. When Archbishop Bernard finally appeared an hour later, I was deep in conversation with my neighbour, a slightly built octogenarian with dishevelled white hair and a brown blazer.
David Ieuan Lloyd, I learnt, had studied and taught alongside Rush Rhees, Peter Winch and R F Holland, Howard Mounce and D Z Phillips, Dick Beardsmore and David Cockburn, in what was known as the ‘Swansea school’. The Philosophy department of Swansea University first cropped up on my radar some years earlier, when İlham Dilman’s treatise on Free Will singlehandedly side-tracked my undergraduate dissertation!
“Yes, I knew İlham well,” Ieuan reflected.
“What’s the big deal with Wittgenstein,” I finally asked, “It just seems like a load of nonsense!”
Ieuan gave a wry smile and what followed led to a series of semi-regular coffee shop conversations. Our inaugural meeting was a Pandora’s Box of maxims, rabbit holes and tangents, of which Ieuan later reflected “I hope the time today was of some use. I wondered when walking back that I stayed too long on the scepticism matter. More positively, would it be an idea when we next meet that you write a short menu on what you would like to discuss.”
Over the course of eighteen months I came to understand something of the ‘Swansea School’, from the many second-hand stories of someone who lived and breathed it, long after its cessation. Ieuan once recalled a story Rush Rhees had told. Read more »