Welsh Journals

rise of comparatively arriviste ruling families seems closely comparable to what happened in contemporary Ireland. The other purely Welsh section consists of a detailed critique of a number of charters from that inexhaustible source of scholarly debate, the Liber Landavensis. Dr. Maund engages in controversy with Professor Wendy Davies on the subject of the integrity and historical usefulness of charters purporting to have been given to eleventh-century bishops of Llandaff, Bleddri, Joseph and Herewald. The nub of Dr. Maund's attack on the authenticity of these charters is best stated in her own words: 'The story [i.e. the charter's narratio] found here is one which, with slight variations, occurs attached to a number of Llandaff charters Given the repetition of this story over a number of charters, and in association with a number of bishops, I can see no reason to consider it even slightly factual it seems to have all the hallmarks of a conventionalised story designed to give a semblance of rationale to the claim of Llandaff to possession of a given territory.' Diplomatic and historical criticism of the Llandaff charters is a highly technical operation into which an outsider intrudes at his peril: here it can only be said that Dr. Maund appears to have established a prima facie case for her scepticism. This book, it must be said, is not an easy read, and is too close in form and structure to the thesis on which it is based. Students of eleventh-century Wales must read it; students of eleventh-century England would benefit from reading it; for Irish historians it is of marginal importance. The pedigrees and other tabulated material heighten the need for a simple map of Welsh kingdoms or gwledydd such as William Rees provided for the eleventh century in his Historical Atlas of Wales (1972, Plate 23). G. W. S. BARROW Edinburgh [This will be Professor Barrow's last review for us. Both editors wish to extend to this pre-eminent historian of the British Isles in the Middle Ages every good wish on his retirement. K.O.M. R.A.G.] THE Picts AND THE SCOTS. By Lloyd and Jenny Laing. Alan Sutton, 1993. Pp. x, 172; 136 illus.; 14 colour pis. £ 16.99. In recent years there have been brief, popular accounts of both the Picts and the Scots which emphasize monuments to be visited, notably Anna Ritchie's Picts (Edinburgh, 1989) and Invaders of Scotland by Anna Ritchie and David J. Breeze (Edinburgh, 1991). There have also been collections of academic articles, such as Pictish Studies, edited by J. G. P. Friell and W. G. Watson (Oxford, 1984): and The Picts: A New Look at Old Problems, edited by Alan Small (Dundee, 1987), both of which seek to build on F. W. Wainwright's classic, The Problem of the Picts (Edinburgh, 1955). Lloyd and Jenny Laing's The Picts and the Scots seeks to fill some of the middle ground between these two types of books, an area where an up-to-date,