Welsh Journals

charmingly and effectively illustrated with many photographs and admirably clear maps and plans. It is attractively written by an author ideally qualified for the task. Born in Cemais, and having lived in its caput, Newport, for most of his life, Dillwyn Miles is its best-known inhabitant and must have published more books on Pembrokeshire than anyone else. This is one of his best. GLANMOR WILLIAMS Swansea IRELAND AND BRITAIN, 1170-1450. By Robin Frame. The Hambledon Press, London and Rio Grande, 1998. Pp. ix, 332. £ 38.00 It would be difficult to exaggerate Robin Frame's contribution to the study of late medieval Irish history. In his books Colonial Ireland (Dublin 1981), English Lordship in Ireland, 1318-1361 (Oxford, 1982), The Political Development of the British Isles, 1100-1400 (Oxford, 1990), and in scholarly articles stretching back to the late 1960s he has advanced our under- standing of a crucial period in the Irish past in fundamental ways. The articles to be found in this attractive volume published by Hambledon are among the most important he has written and should lead to a still wider appreciation of his work. Frame's writings have focused on two central and interrelated aspects of medieval Ireland: the nature of English colonial society in this partially conquered country; and the character of the relationship between the colonists and England. Articles such as 'Power and Society in the Lordship of Ireland', 'English Officials and Irish Chiefs in the Fourteenth Century' and '"Les Engleys nees en Irlande": The English Political Identity in Medieval Ireland' address the first of these topics, while pieces such as 'England and Ireland, 1171-1399', 'King Henry III and Ireland: The Shaping of a Peripheral Lordship' and 'English Policies and Anglo-Irish attitudes in the Crisis of 1341-2' are concerned with the second. A particularly valuable element of his work has been his insistence on viewing Ireland's experience as part of a wider world which includes the island of Britain and, when appropriate, the Angevin empire. This approach is well represented in this collection by such articles as 'Aristocracies and the Political Configuration of the British Isles' and 'Overlordship and Reaction, c. 1250-c. 1450'. With R. R. Davies, Frame has been to the fore in arguing for a new way of studying the history of Britain and Ireland in the middle ages which transcends both national boundaries and historio-