Early Life

Gareth Jones was born in Barry, Vale of Glamorgan on 13th August 1905.

His father, Major Edgar Jones was headmaster of Barry County School which Gareth attended, his mother had spent the period 1889-92 as a tutor to the granddaughters of the Welsh industrialist, John Hughes, who had founded the town of Hughesovka (now Donetsk) in Ukraine. Her stories of her time there inspired Gareth to visit the Soviet Union.

Gareth graduated from the University of Wales in Aberystwyth in 1926 with a first class degree in French and from Trinity College Cambridge in 1929 with a first in German & Russian, all of which he spoke fluently.