Welsh Journals

Adventures with Brittania. Personalities, Politics and Culture in Britain, edited by William Roger Louis (I.B. Tauris, London, 1995, pp. x, 342, £ 24.50). This is a selection of the lectures given at the British Studies Center at the University of Texas, Austin, between 1975 and 1995. Its twenty-one distinguished international contributors include Robert Blake, M. R. D. Foot, Donald Cameron Watt, Robert Skidelsky, Michael Howard and R. A. C. Parker. The final essay, 'Welsh Nationalism' by Kenneth 0. Morgan, surveys the evolution of Welsh national consciousness, cultural and political, from the early eighteenth century to the mid-1990s. Australian Williams, by Bryn Ellis, with sketches by Mary Russon, (Quercus, Birmingham, 1995, pp. 58, available at 8 Hillside Close, Bartley Green, Birmingham B32 4LT). Written by his great-grandson, this is an attractive account of the colourful career of William Williams (1839-1915), an Anglesey man who worked his passage to Australia in 1857 and prospected successfully for gold there and in New Zealand. He returned home in 1872 and ended up as a prosperous builder, Calvinistic Methodist and active Liberal in Liverpool. Jane Parry's pamphlet, A History of the Labour Movement in Neath (pp. 51, £ 2.00), is a short survey of the growth of the Labour Party in Neath and the surrounding community from the First World War down to the 1984-5 miners' strike. There is interesting material on the Spanish Civil War and on women's groups. It is available from Peter Hain MP, Neath Office Fund, 14 The Parade, Neath SAIl IRA. Also received: Hugh Kearney, The British Isles. A History of Four Nations (Cambridge University Press, Canto paperback, 1995, pp. 324, £ 7.95). A new paperback edition of a pioneering survey originally published in 1989. SHORT NOTICES