Welsh Journals

A similar reluctance to regard Edwards in a favourable light as an historian is also prevalent, although he perhaps sought to disarm criticism by maintaining 'that I have stifled every ambition for rising in the subject of my study in order to write books for the education of the children and peasantry of Wales'. David Williams titled a broadcast talk on the occasion of the centenary of the birth of O. M. Edwards, 'A Poet's View'. He was not far off the mark, if at all, for among the private papers there survives a number of essays written in 1884 by the then 26-year-old student for Professor John Nichol in the senior literature class at the University of Glasgow. One of them is on the multiple topic Poet, orator, historian, critic. Hazel Davies does not mention this. It is a revealing comparison of the nature and function of the four who, in the writer's opinion, 'might be compared to artists painting the same landscapes from slightly different positions'. But by far the greater portion of the essay compares the poet with the historian in which it is^ccepted that the historian must be critical and have the power to exercise accurate judgement, but 'as soon as he writes his thoughts he is to a greater or less extent a poet, for no truth can be expressed without some degree of emotion, some emotion tinges the coldest intellectual activity Whether we agree is not particularly important. This is the way O. M. Edwards's view was maturing under Nichol at Glasgow with another, not unconnected, dimension being added in Edward Caird's moral philosophy classes. It may possibly prove profitable to look to such influences at this formative juncture in Edwards's career for clues to his subsequent attitudes. But this is no implied criticism of Hazel Davies who, to her great credit, has produced an excellent and comprehensive appraisal of a complex character which ranks with the best available. GWYNEDD O. PIERCE Cardiff LLOYD GEORGE. By Martin Pugh. Longman, 1988. Pp. 206. £ 12.50 hardback; £ 5.95 paperback. There was a time when historians of twentieth-century Britain seemed reluctant to take Lloyd George very seriously, or to assess his contribution to the making of twentieth-century Britain at all positively. He was regarded ultimately as a destructive force in British political life, whose enduring legacy was the sacrificing of the Liberal Party on the altar of his own ambition. Over the last two decades a mass of new work on Lloyd George has produced a fundamental reassessment of his place in British history. Thanks to the writings of Kenneth Morgan, John Grigg, John Campbell, Bentley Gilbert and others, Lloyd George now enjoys a reputation as the most constructive and influential British statesman of this century, and Asquith has replaced him as the main villain responsible for the break-up of the Liberal Party. Martin Pugh's short biography seeks to provide a synthesis of the recent work on Lloyd George and an overall assessment of his place in the evolution of modem British politics. The volume is the first in a new series, Profiles in Power, under the