Welsh Journals

For the careers of the Chamberlains drip with that much-sought-after classroom commodity, relevance. In observing 'Brummagem Joe' transform himself into 'Joseph Africanus', depriving the Liberals of office over Irish Home Rule and the Conservatives over Tariff Reform, and his cautious son, collar still turned up long after his contemporaries had turned theirs down, busying himself with attempts to revive the canal network even as development work on radar and the Spitfire proceeded apace, we come close to understanding that amalgam of English provincialism and imperialism which has so marked our recent history. This is something A-level students urgently need to understand: these two unchallenging books will not be of much help to them. D. R. BARNES Cardiff T.J.: A LIFE OF DR. THOMAS JONES, CH. By E. L. Ellis, University of Wales Press, Cardiff, 1992. Pp. 553. £ 45.00. Dai Smith once described him as 'the virtual prime minister of Wales in the 1930s'; 'Proconsul' is the term Dr. Ellis opts for. Certainly Tom Jones, Companion of Honour-or was it indeed 'Coleg Harlech'?-was an important man in Wales, perhaps even as Dr. Ellis concludes: 'he was something very like a great man, making up with Lloyd George and Aneurin Bevan the three greatest Welshmen in public life in this century.' Many claims have been made on his behalf and Ellis has no hesitation in repeating them: 'He was without doubt the most prolific, creative influence in social, educational, and perhaps cultural matters in Wales during his lifetime.' Furthermore, he was 'the supreme political diarist of his age' and someone who could justifiably boast that but for his influence the history of the General Strike would have been rather different. Reference to his many publications, to his magnificent archive and to those extracts from his diaries and letters that have been published in several forms and places would quickly substantiate these claims, but nevertheless the evidence was scattered and the argument difficult to bring together. There was a need for a major life befitting the claims and now we have it. Dr Ellis has opted for a good old-fashioned full-length study in which chronology is the chief principle of organization and in which private and family details, health matters and occasional asides take their place alongside the official public career. It is a method which has much to recommend it for we are able to appreciate fully the energy that took the shop manager's son from Rhymney to Whitehall and the amazing combination of skills that allowed him for almost forty years to combine a close interest in the greatest matters of state even as he gave thought as to who the best people were to run almost every aspect of education and policy in Wales. The nature of the career, as well of course as the meticulously prepared and catalogued archive, suggested the method, but what really justifies it is Dr. Ellis's magnificent magisterial prose with which Tom Jones would have been delighted. This is a historical narrative of the very highest order, a quite splendid model for any young historian to follow. The