Gwynfor Evans, who has died at the age of 92, will be remembered as one of the most influential figures of 20th century Wales. Yet, unlike his near contemporary Roy Jenkins, or earlier politicians such as David Lloyd George and Aneurin Bevan, his canvas was always deliberately Wales, rather than Britain. His fame, or for some his notoriety, was largely on the Welsh side of the border.

President of Plaid Cymru, the Welsh nationalist party, for 36 years from 1945, he was the grandson of a Welsh Independent minister from Carmarthenshire and the son of a small department store owner in the prosperous coal-exporting port of Barry in south Wales. It was the ambivalence to Wales and Welshness that he saw all around him which was to inspire him to a life campaigning on Welsh issues.