The actor Richard Burton was born Richard Jenkins in Pontrhydyfen on 10 November 1925, with a series of events taking place to celebrate his centenary year.
Much of the attention has centred around Philip Henry Burton (1904-1995), with the release of the feature film Mr Burton (2025) and Angela V. John’s new biography Behind the Scenes: The Dramatic Lives of Philip Burton (Parthian Books, 2025). Philip was the Port Talbot schoolmaster who became Richard Jenkins’s mentor and legal guardian and whose surname he adopted. He also produced and wrote for BBC radio, before moving to America where he founded the American Musical and Dramatic Academy, eventually retiring to the Florida Keys.
While there are items relating to Richard Burton here and there in the National Library of Wales’s archives (for instance a small group of letters to his friend Dennis Burgess) our papers relating to Philip Burton are rather more significant.
Several of Philip’s radio scripts can be found in the BBC Scripts Archive and his letters to his friend the novelist Rhys Davies (1901-1978) describe his various exploits in America. The Philip Burton Manuscripts include the typescript for his memoir Richard & Philip: The Burtons (London, 1992) (NLW MS 23544D) and his correspondence with David A. Callard that led to that volume being published (NLW MS 23545D).
Philip Burton was the author of several other books, including the novel You, My Brother (New York, 1973), but the Library also has typescripts of two unpublished novels, namely ‘They Called Me Gentleman Johnny’ (NLW MS 23542D) and ‘A Great Reckoning’ (NLW MS 23543D) concerning the lives of the English dramatists John Burgoyne (1722-1792) and Christopher Marlowe (1564-1593) respectively.
Philip Burton died in a Florida hospital on 28 January 1995, at the age of ninety. His protégé Richard had died a decade earlier in Geneva, Switzerland, on 5 August 1984.
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