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rural society' seems a questionable assertion from the author's own evidence. But such minor quibbles should not substantially detract from the considerable merit of an important and, in many respects, a highly impressive study. R. E. QUINAULT Magdalen College, Oxford R. T. JENKINS. By Alun Llywelyn-Williams. Writers of Wales Series, University of Wales Press, Cardiff, 1977. Pp. 70. £ 1.50. For the apprentice historian, reading R. T. Jenkins's books can be both an inspiring and a dispiriting experience. He inspires because he was a compellingly vivid historian and artist. But he is also dispiriting simply because he fills one with an almost nightmarish awe and a feeling of utter inadequacy. What other Welsh historian has combined such accurate scholarship with so much imaginative insight, intellectual vision and brilliance in exposition? R. T. Jenkins produced a rich variety of historical works, novels and belles lettres, particularly during the period from 1922 to 1951. He first displayed his many-sided skills as a writer in the 1920s when he established himself as a popular contributor to YLlenor, the most thought-provoking periodical of the day. As Alun Llywelyn-Williams shows, two major influences dominated his thinking during that crucial period. The first was his love for France and his keenly-felt desire to broaden the horizons of his countrymen and persuade them to think again about traditional stereotypes and hackneyed assumptions. He wrote extensively about France and his essays were subsequently collected and published under the title, Ffrainc a9i Phobl, one of the most outstanding travel books written in Welsh. His second major obsession was the way in which the past ought to be interpreted. His Yr Apel at Hanes was a doughty affirma- tion of the integrity and independence of the past. He believed that it was the historian's duty to be detached and impartial, to study the past 'for its own sake' and, as far as possible, to disencumber his mind of all present presuppositions. Whatever the merits of his case, his stand was particularly timely, for he had supplied an important counter-balance to the cloying romanticism of some of his predecessors and contempor- aries. Whereas a historian like Owen M. Edwards had been largely evocative and sentimental in his approach, R. T. Jenkins now preached the virtues of rigorous technical competence. R. T. Jenkins's qualities as a historian were myriad: his thoroughness and patience as a researcher; his acute and often humorous perception; and his conspicuous fairness as a judge. He was not an arid professional or a desk-bound pedant. Like Richard Cobb, he had an instinct for place, scene and atmosphere. More than anything perhaps, he believed that history was a living force. To him, the historian's task was not simply to pig up 'mountains of dead ashes and burnt bones', but to convey the subtle shades of reality and the richness of man's experience in the past.