Welsh Journals

critique. We need to look far more closely at the ways in which broadcasting has changed the language itself. What impact has there been on vocabulary and pronunciation? We are made all too painfully aware of how many transmitters had to be built to overcome the natural barriers in Wales but nothing is said about the nature of the new Welsh-speaking nation-within-a-nation that evolved. Most incredibly there is no concerted attempt to evaluate what has been broadcast in Welsh. The whole point of the struggle was that the talents of Saunders Lewis andT. Rowland Hughes could be given air-time. How good and how original were the broadcasts that are here only mentioned in passing? Surely this was a chance for some celebration? And has there been a Welsh broadcasting style? We are told that Alun Williams and Hywel Gwynfryn were stars; this was the place to say why. Less surprising is the author's failure to assess either the potential or the achievements of English-language broadcasting in Wales. There are brief accolades for those bilingual broadcasters who became well-known nationally, such as Wynford Vaughan Thomas and Hywel Davies, but at moments when sustained celebration is called for the judgements are cryptic. A quotation informs us that Huw Wheldon was 'without question the greatest broadcasting figure to have come from Wales', but there is no explanation or justification. We are told that the death of Dylan Thomas 'was as much a loss to broadcasting as it was to poetry' but again there is no explanation; Under Milk Wood is mentioned only in passing. The Burtons, Philip (or R.H. here) and Richard, receive several brief references and so have done better than others. Gwyn Thomas just gets in at the bottom of a page but there is no mention at all of Elwyn Jones, Alun Richards, Ewart Alexander and, quite unbelievably, Elaine Morgan. Quite simply no attempt has been made to evaluate the contribution of Welsh broadcasters in the English language, and the author's lack of interest is all too apparent. He is understandably sarcastic about Max Boyce, but it is not enough simply to say that Harry Secombe was 'well known'. The success of the much loved Welsh Rarebit is reported but never analysed. We can only hope that subsequent volumes will choose to celebrate broadcasters rather than administrators and committees. Meanwhile, readers of this volume should take note of comments made by Michael Swann in 1973. Speaking as chairman of the BBC Governors, he expressed 'his surprise that more emphasis had not been placed in the past on the argument that a country where there are two languages needs twice as much money for broadcasting'. At this stage a fuller account of the place of broadcasting in Welsh life was needed, for the fight is now on to inaugurate a new era in which it is hoped that creativity will be sparked by a fuller and