Welsh Journals

REVIEWS A SHORT HISTORY OF MODERN WALES. By David Williams. 3rd edition, John Murray, 1961. Pp. 134. 7s. 6d. This is a revised edition of a well-known and much-used school textbook. In the present edition Professor Williams has revised the text and brought the narrative up to the present day. Textbooks do not normally have such a long life as this one, a reflection both on the reliability and usefulness of this book and on the dearth of textbooks of Welsh history for schools. The virtues of the book are well known to a generation of schoolboys and their teachers; it is accurate, concise, clear, and judicious. One need not fear that a schoolboy who reads this book will suffer from an over-colourful, biased, or romantic view of his country's history. Indeed, the danger is rather the contrary one-that the young reader will be overwhelmed by this rather solid catalogue of facts. In this new edition, Professor Williams has made sure that there are few occasions when the professional historian would quarrel with him, though one or two still remain. Thus to describe the Act of Union (why, incidentally, is it a 'great' Act?) as 'abolishing feudalism in Wales' is a serious misuse of terms, which even a schoolboy should not be allowed to perpetrate. Again, the claim of the Cecils to be a family of Welsh origin is still not firmly settled, in spite of what Dr. Rowse thinks; while the assessment of Tudor literature on pp. 28-9 is not one which will be shared by all. But such criticisms are few in number and minor in character, and one must be thankful that our schoolchildren have such an accurate text-book at hand. The attempt of the publishers to enhance the beauty of the book with a rather lurid and inappropriate cover was unfortunate; but in every other respect the new edition is to be welcomed. R. R. DAVIES. Swansea. ARCHAEOLOGY, HISTORY, AND SCIENCE. By R. J. C. Atkinson. University of Wales Press, Cardiff, 1960. Pp. 30. It is hardly surprising that Professor Atkinson should have chosen, as the subject of his inaugural lecture in the Chair of Archaeology in the University of Wales, the relationship of archaeology to history and science. Archaeology is, today, passing through a phase of bewilderingly rapid development, largely as a result of the application to it of an ever-increasing range of scientific techniques; Professor Atkinson has played a leading part in this process, and it is natural that he should ask us to examine in the light of this the place of archaeology in the academic world, while admitting that the question whether it is a branch of historical studies, or a science, is strictly unanswerable.