Welsh Journals

historian of Pembrokeshire) and Glanville Ll. Williams, Q.C. (the present Rouse Ball Professor of English Law in the University of Cambridge). An appendix giving names and brief biographical details of distinguished alumni would have formed a very welcome addition to the book. These deficiences are of no great importance and do not obscure the book's many merits. One hopes that its appearance will stimulate other early grammar schools in the principality to follow suit. May they be as fortunate as Cowbridge in securing as printers firms of the quality of D. Brown and Sons. The present managing directors of this firm are two brothers who were educated at Cowbridge. T. J. HOPKINS Cardiff Free Library GLAMORGAN HISTORIAN, Vol. IV. Edited by Stewart Williams. Cowbridge, 1967. Pp. 252. 35s. This, the fourth volume in the series, has very much to commend it. Most immediately apparent, perhaps, is the quality of its production. The general layout, the print, the illustrations, even the size of the book-all invite the reader's attention. Then, Mr. Williams has achieved a very happy union of many facets of the county's past as presented by writers whose training, interests and approaches are essentially different. The contributions of professional historians, enlightened amateurs and young researchers complement one another so successfully that together they create a volume which is interesting, informative and eminently readable. The volume contains something for everyone: studies in the social history of various parts of the county; pen-portraits of interesting individuals; a summary of religious developments in the Rhondda to the end of the sixteenth century; surveys of specialist occupational groups; accounts of commercial and industrial undertakings; a brilliant piece of scholarly detective work; the story of an off-shore island, and all prefaced by a charming retrospect of boyhood which recaptures much of the magic of a bygone Vale. Leslie Illingworth writes of the people among whom he grew up in the St. Athan area, and introduces the reader to some of the fascinating inhabitants of the Vale of not so very long ago. Mrs. Patricia Moore's account of the orangeries at Margam is particularly interesting in itself, and derives added value from the glimpses which it gives of the social life of a Wales that has all but disappeared. Very different is the subject of Ieuan G. Jones's article on the Merthyr Tydfil of the mid-nineteenth century. He succeeds in presenting a penetrating analysis of the social and cultural impact of industrialisation in his study of the lives of working men, women and children, whom he presents to the reader with humanity and sympathy. Tom Ridd looks at the same problem from another point