Welsh Journals

to lift the veil on the largely concealed world of working-class radical culture. Among the wide range of topics covered, such journals highlighted continental developments and ideology. The international connection also entered the social and ceremonial life of radical circles, events and figures from continental revolutions helping to fill the calendar of anniversaries and celebrations. On such occasions, activists from various nations came together in solidarity, despite linguistic and cultural barriers. One of the most notable of these displays was the public welcome organized by Chartists on the return of John Frost, after almost seventeen years' exile, in September 1856. The huge procession through London included some five hundred emigre radicals, 'the flower of foreign democracy, the men who had fought at the barricades of Paris, Berlin, Vienna and Milan, or in the battlefields of Hungary, Italy and Poland' (p. 127, from the People's Paper, 20 September 1856). Such apposite quotes splendidly support the text, while the footnotes are full and precise, and the bibliography extensive. Finally, the book has been excellently produced by the publishers; less attractive is their price. RYLAND WALLACE Pontypool PRESS, POLITICS and SOCIETY: A HISTORY OF JOURNALISM IN WALES. By Aled Jones. University of Wales Press, Cardiff, 1993. Pp. xii, 317. £ 29.95. Historians of the press have long indicated that the Welsh press needs a separate study. Now Aled Jones has produced it. His history of Welsh journalism is an impressive undertaking, spanning two languages and two centuries. The impressive bank of acknowledgements at the beginning and source references at the end of the book demonstrate the range of material which has been used. The press is not an easy topic for historical research, being a historical resource as well as an institution worthy of historical study in its own right. Some press histories have focused almost exclusively on the political commentary provided by newspapers, to the exclusion of any consideration of the nature of the medium itself. Dr. Jones encompasses both the political and the institutional tendencies. His history is organized around the press as an institution, but in such a way that questions of political culture and influence also figure to a great extent. He considers the production of the text, its distribution, questions of ownership and control, conflicting contemporary attitudes towards the role and influence of the press, and, finally, the changes which were wrought in the twentieth century in the distinctive Welsh patterns of journalism, not least by the arrival of the new media. The periodical press in Wales had its origins in the early eighteenth century when, in 1735, Lewis Morris attempted to launch Tlysauyr Hen Oesoedd in Holyhead. It was sustained by a variety of voluntary organizations and social movements, Liberalism and nonconformity playing a large role. It had a distinctive 'social geography'. It was essentially a local journalism; and the mining, agricultural, manufacturing and tourist districts of Wales each produced their own distinctive forms. It was marked by bilingualism and denominationalism. Other features, notably the strong nineteenth-