Welsh Journals

sites at home and abroad visited by him, and Flora Fraser on the equally far-flung array of statues, monuments and other piles erected in his honour. On the same theme, a 'Nelson Gazetteer' appears as an addendum, a noticeably brief and far from exhaustive list of a dozen sites connected with Nelson or containing Nelson relics, all of them in England and Wales, all accessible to the public. This is a specialist book designed for a fairly specialist readership. Reasonably priced, with clear, authoritative text and well-captioned illustrations, this attractive and informative volume will be essential reading for all serious students of one of England's most illustrious heroes. PETER GAUNT Chester British BLAST FURNACE Statistics, 1790-1980. By Philip Riden and John G. Owen. Merton Priory Press, 1995. Pp. 212. £ 35.00. All too frequently even 'favourable' book reviews seem obliged to try to balance matters by asserting as many cons as pros, seemingly to highlight the reviewer's particular expertise. Well, I wish to declare my hand at the outset by congratulating the authors of British Blast Furnace Statistics on a job thoroughly well done. The few slight blemishes aren't there in any book if one looks long enough? fail to detract from the excellence of this publication and it would be churlish of me to highlight them. Indeed, I believe they must be seen essentially in what the statistics do not say as the volume does not pretend to be any more than a true copy of primary sources. Any failings, if they could ever be called such, are more than compensated by the excellent introduction which lends real clarification to what might otherwise prove a veritable statistical minefield. Philip Riden has seen his life's labour, a veritable love affair ever since his Oxford undergraduate days, flourish into the source-reference for a significant portion of British industrial history. But by showing the same enterprise and commitment displayed by the ironmasters he chronicles, as the moving force behind the Merton Priory Press, he surely gives notice to the wider publishing world that a seemingly uninteresting title can be so lavishly produced and still viably marketed. Of course there is no intention here to minimize the obvious contribution made by John Owen, a significance duly recognized by Riden in his preface, and I am sure that Owen would concur with the comments above. Little did Robert Hunt know in 1854 when he introduced his Mineral