Welsh Journals

could have worked out very differently from what now seems familiar and 'given'. Further change in the complex pattern of relationships which we have inherited may lie ahead of us. All that is well said. It is also salutary to be reminded (notwithstanding the initial reference to 'the English, Irish, Scots and Welsh') of the great regional diversity within those peoples-not for nothing did Professor Black work in the University of Durham for many years before moving to Devon. He permits himself the view, for example, that from the perspective of Swansea, with its enterprise zone near the M4, its retail parks and new waterside developments, it is hard to see the causes of Welsh independence and cultural nationalism as other than a potentially dangerous irritant. Wales, he concludes, though small, is 'a very strongly regional country'. Of course, readers and reviewers alike will take issue with this or that particular emphasis, this or that over-simplification, this or that inclusion or omission. In a book of this length, critics will draw up their own lists of such slips or defects in ways which reflect their own special knowledge and interests. Such is the profusion of contemporary historiography in all pertinent fields that no single author of a book of this kind is likely to receive universal plaudits for his temerity in tackling the task. There were times when facts and figures were shunted in rather breathlessly before scampering on to some new topic-though we should be grateful for a reference to the fact that the Welsh red kite has been brought back from the brink of extinction, an achievement not often referred to in books of this kind. History may be one damn thing after another but it would have been helpful in the final chapter on the British Isles today to have attempted more by way of summation or conclusion than the page Professor Black permits himself. What does the 'history of the British Isles' all add up to? Perhaps he already has such an enterprise in hand. KEITH ROBBINS Lampeter THE END OF ROMAN BRITAIN. By Michael E. Jones. Cornell University Press, Ithaca, N.Y. and London, 1996. Pp.323, figs. 10, one map. £ 35.50. The non-specialist might wonder whether there is room for yet another full- scale study of the end of Roman Britain. However, there are still so many unanswered questions about that turning-point in the history of Britain that there will be space for re-examinations of the subject for a long time yet, provided that they produce new evidence or explore a fresh hypothesis that