Welsh Journals

redundant. Yet it is useful, particularly for readers unfamiliar with the history of Wales, to see the main sweep of events and identify the major turning points. This is an attractively produced volume, containing ten chapters, that outline the history of Wales from neolithic times down to the present day. The conciseness of the presentation gives a rather breathless narrative at times, especially in the first chapter on pre-Norman Wales, and here and there lack of clarity appears as the author tries to squeeze in as much as possible. Accounts of the later agrarian history of Wales, for example, contain some odd statements about agricultural innovation in the eighteenth century or the size of large estates in the nineteenth. Nor is it exactly right, for instance, to include Dr. John Davies of Mallwyd as a representative of gentry scholarship in Welsh antiquities, given his modest origins; he was, rather, a beneficiary of their patronage. The author is a bit ungenerous also to the early Methodists. Though recent research has cut them down to size, there were positive as well as negative reasons for their successes in winning new adherents to religion. Such limitations are inevitable in so compressed an history, but they should not detract from some highly lucid writing in many other places, for example, on medieval Welsh politics, or modern Welsh politics (as might be expected of the author) and industrial history. An attractive feature of the volume is the inclusion of panels of special or additional information on some pages to supplement the chapter texts. These are mostly biographical details about some of the important figures in Welsh history. The choice, for the most part, is unexceptionable and the details agreeable. One might carp at the inclusion of Jemima Nicholas as one of the few examples of Welsh womanhood but otherwise the presentation works well. Good use of maps and photographs further adds to the attractiveness of the work, and perhaps the only real disappointment occurs with the glossary which seems to be random in its choice of terms. Welsh history has advanced much in the twentieth century in the amount of research pursued and published and Mr. Jones's summarization of all this is a singular accomplishment. But it has taken twice the amount of pages to produce this pocket guide than went to make up an earlier, famous guide prepared by Sir John Lloyd in 1930. The contrast between the two guides in themes selected and emphases placed on events in Welsh history is instructive as to how the interpretation of Wales, by itself and for itself and the world, has changed. This volume is a good successor to Lloyd's and ought to serve its purpose well for a long while. W. P. GRIFFITH Bangor THREE CONTEMPORARY POETS: THOM GUNN, TED HUGHES AND R. S. THOMAS. Edited by A. E. Dyson. Macmillan, 1990. Pp. 294. £ 30.00. Amongst Welsh authors writing in English, R. S. Thomas has done more than most to identify himself with the campaign to defend the Welsh language, and to proselytize