Welsh Journals

compensation case-papers, lodge records, personal collections, and the records of miners' rehabilitation centres. One wonders whether a guide to sources is best organized as a series of studies of individual archives, and a second edition might be organized thematically by subject, rather than by location. At times too, contributors tend to define medical records rather narrowly, occasionally forgetting that historians of health and medicine are interested in records of any kind that have a bearing, however indirect, on their specialism. However, these are minor quibbles, and the editors and contributors should be congratulated for their foresight in providing a guide which is likely to become an indispensable tool for historians of medicine working on south Wales. It is also to be hoped that the guide may encourage the growing interest in local studies, including comparative European projects, and ensure that in future, historians working on England and Wales devote as much space to Wales as to England. JOHN WELSHMAN Leicester FOOTPRINTS IN THE SAND. By W S. K. Thomas. Gomer Press, Llandysul, 1994. Pp.151. £ 8.50. This volume, subtitled 'Brecknock Notabilities', brings together a collection of ten essays on individuals associated with the county of Brecon during a very wide period of history. Commencing in the medieval period with an essay on Gerald of Wales, the author progresses through the ages, there being a predominance of personalities from the early modern period. Each essay is well-written, sympathetic to the individual being discussed and although most essays do not include any new biographical information, they nevertheless contain considerable evidence of a local nature and a valuable analysis of the careers of those under discussion. The role of Dafydd Gam, a Breconshire landowner, in the opposition to Owain Glyndwr is reported yet not analysed to the extent to which it could, there being little attempt to demonstrate and understand the influences that forged those attitudes. The essays on Jenkin Jones, Howell Harris and Theophilus Jones are particularly noteworthy, however, especially in view of the local material that they contain. The essay on Jones portrays the manner in which support for Parliament in Wales during the Civil War manifested itself and the motives which prompted the adoption of that cause by individual landowners in Wales. The activities of Harris in Breconshire, particularly in respect of the