JPR: an Autobiography

(London, Collins, 1979). 8vo; original red boards; laminated pictorial dustwrapper slightly creased; pp. 254, incl. index; black-and-white photographic plates. Very good condition. "J.P.R. Williams has been blessed with enough talents for half a dozen careers. Now a successful doctor who intends to specialize in sports injuries, his first success was as a singer, much in demand for his rendering of 'O for the wings of a dove' which he gave with an innocence many would not associate with the aggressive performances he was later to give on the rugby field. At seventeen he won the Wimbledon Junior Tennis title, by which time he was also playing in the Glamorgan Youth Orchestra as violinist. At nineteen, after learning his skills as a rugby player in the harsh school of Welsh rugby, he won his first full Welsh cap against Scotland in 1969. Since then he has gone from strength to strength, so that now only Barry John and Gareth Edwards are better known to rugby followers throughout the world. . . . In 1978 he was appointed captain of the Welsh team and in May 1979 finally retired from international rugby after a career which rightly earned him the reputation of being the greatest full-back in the world." .