Kenneth Shenton writes:
THE Revd Morgan Llewellyn was very much a rarity, being the only priest to have served as the colonel of any regiment. During his three decades in the army, he undertook active service in the jungles of Malaya, in the divided city of Berlin, and during the conflict in Northern Ireland. He was a man of deep faith, and his most unusual career move, at the age of 56, became the subject of a profile piece in the Church Times of 16 July 1993.
“One lunch-hour in 1986, a major and a brigadier sat side by side on a bench on the Victoria Embankment. A nosy passer-by would have noticed that the major was energetically talking and the brigadier was silent and troubled.
“Christianity was the topic. The troubled brigadier was Morgan Llewellyn, and that hour on the bench turned out to be a turning-point in his life. The talking major, who worked under him at the Ministry of Defence, was doing a spot of lunch-hour evangelism, and it worked.”
Born in Devon in 1937, but raised in Monmouthshire, Richard Morgan Llewellyn, universally known as Morgan, was educated at Haileybury Armed Service College, where he won all the main school art prizes. He undertook his National Service in the Royal Welch Fusiliers in 1956, serving in both Malaya and Cyprus. He had planned to read theology, but, in a change of heart, he moved to the Regular List. In 1964, he was promoted to captain, becoming a major five years later. In 1970, he moved to the Army Services College, at Camberley.
His army career included posts of military assistant to the Chief of the General Staff; brigade major of the 39th Infantry Brigade; postings in Northern Ireland; and promotion to lieutenant colonel, assuming command of the 1st Battalion Royal Welch Fusiliers. He joined the Royal College of Defence Studies in 1979, was promoted to brigadier and spent three years in Hong Kong, commanding the Gurkha Field Force.
He returned to the Ministry of Defence as the last Deputy Director of Army Staff Duties, and then Director. On 1 December 1987, he was granted the acting rank of major general and succeeded the then Major General Peter de la Billière as general officer commanding in Wales. Promotion to major general was confirmed in 1986, and four years later, he took up post as Chief of Staff of the United Kingdom Land Forces, his tenure including the First Gulf War.
Llewellyn retired from the army in 1991 to study at Salisbury and Wells Theological College. Ordained deacon in 1993, he served at St Mary’s, Brecon, and Brecon Cathedral as a minor canon. Having regularly preached at Christ College, Brecon, he became Chaplain. There, over the course of six years, he cared for his charges in a naturally inclusive way. Happily, amid the gravitas lay a most highly developed sense of the ridiculous.
He married Elizabeth Sobey in 1964.
His dedication to the Forces continued. He chaired the Gurkha Trust in Wales, and the local board of the Army Benevolent Fund. He was appointed MBE in 1976, OBE in 1979, and CB in 1992. He was an office in the Order of St John, and served as Deputy Lieutenant of Powys.
Although largely self-taught, Llewellyn proved an accomplished artist, chairing the Armed Forces Art Association. When in London, he had managed to attend life-drawing classes at St Martin’s School of Art. He was equally at home painting landscapes or portraits, and his most impressive work, a triptych, The Last Supper with the Crucifixion and Resurrection, is in the chapel of Christ College, Brecon. Members of the school community, including the artist, are the apostles. Looking away from the viewer, he fixes his attention very firmly on Jesus.
Llewellyn died on 10 December 2024, aged 87, and is survived by his wife and four of their five children.
