Welsh Journals

THE SHELL GUIDE TO WALES. By Wynford Vaughan-Thomas and Alun Llewellyn. Michael Joseph (in association with George Rainbird), 1969. Pp. 360. 50s. Presumably this sumptuously-produced volume was meant to catch the Croeso market, and for tourists it is on the whole a well produced book which will help to 'sell Wales' (though the photograph of gloomy cottages at Mallwyd will not help to 'sell Mallwyd'). The authors have carried out very well their first difficult task of compressing Welsh history into some sixty pages, although Llewelyn II was 'Ein Llyw Olaf not 'Ein Llew Olaf-Our Last Lion', p. 27). The main body of the book is a gazetteer, good on the whole, but inevitably selective and open to criticism. No mention is made of Rhos (Rhosllanerchrugog), for example, which the north-east considers to be Wales's most famous village. 'Bagillt' receives an entry: fair enough, but the tourist's attention is drawn to Downings Hall which has been burnt down, and no mention is made of Mostyn Hall next door to it and still very much standing. The real strength of the gazetteer is in its fine descriptions of lakes and mountains, although there seems no justification for using 'the Ellennith' for the wastes of mid-Wales; it is hardly used anywhere else and is not marked on the maps in this book. From the tourist's point of view, too much attention is paid to Giraldus Cambrensis, Christopher Saxton and Daniel Paterson's guidebook of 1811, and too little to the actual state of things today. From the historian's point of view, there is far too much attention paid to the Romano-British or Arthurian period. Of the eighty-one lines given to Llanfyllin, seventy are taken up with a very shaky hypothetical discussion of the place-name; almost nothing is said about this charming town today. Under Llangollen there are thirty-five lines on the 'mysterious Hill of Bran', even associating it with 'Mithraic legionary faiths', and only some three lines about the International Eisteddfod, without telling the tourist at what time of year he can visit it! This imbalance runs through the book, and the Arthurian quirkiness makes a chapter called 'The Spirit of Wales' (pp. 59-62) quite incomprehensible; it also spoils and warps the bibliography. Serious, from the historian's point of view, are the many inaccuracies scattered through the book. Chirk castle (pp. 146-47) is now only half as large as was first envisaged, not much larger as the authors imply. They have clumsily misunderstood the amusing tale of Richard Wilson (not 'an allegedly foreign artist') painting Pistyll Rhaeadr (not 'the falls at Rhayader') and being disturbed by a shepherd. A glance at Theophilus Jones's History of Brecknockshire and at the Shell Guide to Mid- Wales by David Verey (neither mentioned in what passes for a bibliography) would have saved many mistakes on Breconshire. Newton, for example, was Henry Vaughan's farm (it is still on modern maps) and not (as 'Newton St. Briget') an anglicization of Llansantffraed. Llanelieu has little to do