Welsh Journals

of the north-western counties is not available ? It is equally curious that no attention is paid to the towns of Wales. A few of John Speed's plans of the medieval bastide towns would certainly add to the importance of the atlas in a subsequent reprint, to say nothing of the possible inclusion of later town plans. This is all important in a historical atlas in an age such as our own when urban sprawl is disfiguring so much of the past. We may, however, be asking too much. The sub-title of this atlas gives the author an open field- from early to modern times'-and it is difficult indeed to make a balanced selection of topics within such wide terms of reference. Nevertheless, in recent years the author has startled us all by proving that he is by no means a narrow medieval specialist his recent two magnificent volumes show that he is an equally great authority on the beginnings of the industrial age and its associated technology. Are we asking too much of Professor Rees to reduce some, at least, of this fascinating new material to map form, and include it in the next revision of this atlas-the standard atlas on the historical geography of Wales ? E. G. BOWEN Aberystwyth THE CELTIC REALMS. By Myles Dillon and Nora Chadwick. Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1967. Pp. 355. 63s. This volume makes a welcome addition to the publishers' series, The History of Civilisation. Indeed, without it the series would be seriously defective. European civilization cannot be understood without a proper appreciation of its debt to the Celts, for the Romans, despite all protestations to the contrary, were not the first people to raise the standard of culture and civilization in northern and western Europe, and their legacy to the middle ages was not only preserved in large measure but also considerably enriched by the peripheral Celts, the people who retained to some extent the ideas and institutions of those earlier Celts who stormed Rome, over-ran Delphi and swept on to Asia Minor in the east and to Spain, France and the British Isles in the west. The publishers are also to be congratulated on their choice of authors for this volume, for it would be difficult to name two scholars better qualified to tell what is known of the Celts in prehistoric times, and of the Celtic peoples later in their separate realms, the founding of the Celtic kingdoms, their institutions, their languages and literature, their art, and the part they have played in the history of Europe. Dr. Dillon is a Philolog in the full sense of the German word, an acknowledged authority on Indo-European and one of the three foremost Celtic scholars of the present time, while Dr. Chadwick is the historian par excellence of the early Celtic realms which developed round the Irish Sea. Both scholars have mastered what Quiller-Couch called the 'art of writing', and this volume will be read not only with great profit but also with considerable delight by the 'common reader' as well as by the professional scholar.