George Emlyn Williams, CBE (26 November 1905 – 25 September 1987) was a Welsh writer, dramatist and actor.
Williams was born into a Welsh-speaking, working class family at 1 Jones Terrace, Pen-y-ffordd, Ffynnongroyw, Flintshire. He was the eldest of the three surviving sons of Mary (née Williams) a former maid-servant and Richard Williams, a greengrocer. He spoke only Welsh until the age of eight. Later he said he would probably have begun working in the mines at age 12 if he had not caught the attention of Sarah Grace Cooke, the model for Miss Moffat in The Corn Is Green. She was a teacher of French at the grammar school in Holywell, Flintshire in 1915, where Williams had gone on a scholarship. Over the next seven years she encouraged him in his studies and helped pay for him to stay with a French friend of hers in Haute-Savoie in France, where he spent three months perfecting his French. When he was 17 she helped him win a scholarship to Christ Church, Oxford, where he studied French and Italian.
In 1926, during his studies at university, Williams had a nervous breakdown, which was blamed largely on a failed emotional friendship with another undergraduate. As a means of recovery Miss Cooke encouraged him to write. However, Williams intended to enter the theatrical world too and joined the Oxford University Dramatic Society (OUDS).

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