Congratulations, Dai Smith (updated)

Congratulations to Professor Dai Smith on his appointment as interim chair of the Arts Council of Wales.

I welcomed this appointment yesterday in the Chamber:

Leighton Andrews: I also wish to welcome the appointment of Elan Closs Stephens, who will bring academic rigour to the review of the arts. I also thank Geraint Talfan Davies for his work as chair of the arts council. Do you agree that Professor Dai Smith is one of our leading social and cultural historians? Do you also agree that he had a distinguished career at BBC Wales as head of English-language programmes, where he commissioned dramas of significance, such as Karl Francis’s Street Life and Trevor Griffiths’s Food for Ravens? Do you agree that Dai Smith’s robust common sense and intellectual integrity are precisely the qualities that the arts council needs at this moment?

Alun Pugh: Indeed. Professor Smith has a long record of scholarship, and you are right to draw the Chamber’s attention to that. He has also had a successful management career, and not many people can boast having both