Welsh Journals

experience which traces the relationship with Dame Margaret with sensitivity and avoids the tendency to nudging sensationalism. Lloyd George 'could charm the birds from the trees' but it has to be said that the revelation given of his character is not particularly charming. His case, as Dr. Morgan remarks, has gone by default before, but he is not his own best advocate. That accolade, perhaps inevitably, must go to his second wife, Frances Stevenson. EDWARD DAVID Bristol LOCAL SOURCES FOR THE YOUNG HISTORIAN. By Robert Dunning. Frederick Muller, London, 1973. Pp. xiv, 112, 19 illust., 7 maps. £ 2.00. Robert Dunning's book provides the beginner with yet another guide to sources for the study of local history. Dr. Dunning introduces the young historian to those sources available locally for what amounts to a study of an English rural community. He has assumed that most young readers will have access only to locally available material, and we must accept the basic realism of this approach. Anyone who has had anything at all to do with the educational or recreational use of archives will confirm that it is essential that the material to be used should be available within easy reach of the community whose history is being studied. Dr. Dunning has further limited himself, as he admits, to sources which 'are, on the whole, more useful for writing the histories of villages than for town studies'. It is difficult to see how he could have done otherwise in the space at his disposal-a mere 112 pages, of which 79 discuss the sources, the remainder providing what is probably the most valuable part of the book, a case study of one village, Wilton in Somerset, applying the techniques and using the sources discussed in the earlier section. In his guide for the young historian, Dr. Dunning discusses mapwork, fieldwork and documentary evidence, and he has much to say of interest to the beginner, whether he be young or old. Indeed, he has several wise words of warning for those who might approach the subject too lightly or ambitiously. His warning that 'you must not expect to find a document which gives all the answers; history isn't like that', echoes the advice given by many an archivist to the young searcher. And yet Dr. Dunning's own approach leaves one with the uneasy feeling that he himself is rather too ambitious. He devotes two and a half pages to Domesday Book and three to subsidy, poll and hearth taxes, too short a space in which to do justice to the material or offer any real guidance to the beginner, and yet taking up a comparatively large part of a short book-one chapter out of the eight. By contrast, the nineteenth century, the period which can be approached most readily by a youngster and yet one for which careful guidance is essential, is rather sketchily treated. Apart from the locally available transport records, Dr. Dunning's main suggestions for source material for the study of this period are trade directories, newspapers and rate books. Surely the census enumerators' books now available on microfilm in most