Welsh Journals

Berliners in November 1918? There would have been plenty of opportunity for bitterness and recrimination in both Allied capitals. We must hope that, when the second volume of this enterprise appears, these shortcomings will be made good, and that the claims in the blurb will be triumphantly justified. A. J. NICHOLLS St Antony's College, Oxford GROWING UP IN WALES, 1895-1939. Edited by Jeffrey Grenfell-Hill. Gomer Press, Llandysul, 1996. Pp. 178. £ 7.95. Growing Up In Wales is a fascinating and highly readable collection of oral history interviews, in which thirteen respondents, nine of whom are women, recall their childhood and adolescence in south Wales in the first half of this century. Those printed here are clearly just a selection from a wider range of interviews conducted by the author, on which he draws in a useful introduction. All the tales are vividly told, often with spell-bindingly graphic detail, and the interviews range over a wide spectrum of topics such as school, home-life, play, coming of age rituals, courtship, early working life, marriage and childbirth. There are many points of similarity in the experiences recalled by Jeffrey Grenfell-Hill's respondents but there are also some interesting variations of experience, many of which are class- based. For example, in the accounts of school life a wide range of experience emerges in terms of the disciplinary measures meted out to pupils. At one end of the spectrum there are brutal infant schools where staff would, 'slap and hit the children even in the Babies' class' and incidents of quite shocking cruelty where over-zealous masters would punch boys to the ground. On the other hand, there are nostalgic memories for kindly and caring teachers and recollections of unquestioning obedience to school rules, which scarcely needed any disciplinary sanctions to enforce. Writing of Cardiff High School for Girls during the First World War under the firm hand of the headmistress, Miss Mary Collin, Florence Amor recalls: 'I cannot remember many school rules and I certainly did not find them onerous: but then, I like orderliness. Upon reflection, we must have been a tame bunch We were just expected to behave properly and we were so proud of our school uniform that we would not dream of disgracing it.'