The Real Gareth Jones - Separating Fact from Fiction

Philip Colley is bringing an illustrated talk to The White Rock Hotel on Saturday 7 November, titled The Real Gareth Jones – Separating Fact from Fiction. It's a story about his great-uncle, Gareth Jones, a Welsh journalist who lived a life that reads like a novel and then vanished from the public eye for decades.

Jones was a brilliant journalist, fluent in five languages, a pacifist and an insatiable traveller. He worked for Lloyd George and flew with Adolf Hitler, but he's best known for the international storm he caused in 1933 when he revealed the Great Soviet famine. After that, he spent the rest of his short life on the move. In 1935, he was captured and shot by bandits on the plains of Inner Mongolia, just a day before his 30th birthday. For a long time after that, he was largely forgotten by everyone but his close family.

He's regained worldwide recognition in recent years, much of it thanks to the film Mr Jones starring James Norton. But as with most docudramas, the film doesn't always stick close to the facts. That's where this talk comes in. Philip Colley is a Hastings local who's spent 40 years researching Jones's life, and he'll be drawing on overlooked archival evidence to challenge how his great-uncle was portrayed in the film and in the parliamentary debates of the time.

It's a family story told from the inside, and since it's an illustrated talk, you'll get to see the evidence he's been working with rather than just hearing about it. The session starts at 2.30pm at The White Rock Hotel, 1-10 White Rock, Hastings, TN34 1JU, and entry is free.