Welsh Journals

to the series, and a volume for which students and lecturers, as well as general readers, will long have reason to be grateful to its author. MATTHEW CRAGOE Hertfordshire History OF TRINITY COLLEGE, CARMARTHEN, 1848-1998. By Russell Grigg. University ofWales Press, Cardiff, 1998. Pp xviii, 332. £ 14.95. Trinity College, Carmarthen has received little attention from historians in the past, but now Dr Grigg, a graduate of Trinity and a member of its academic staff, has produced a substantial account of his college's story to commemorate its 150th anniversary. The first chapter looks at the beginnings of the college, small in numbers-22 entrants in its initial year-and financially insecure. Dr Grigg considers the academic staff between 1848 and 1948 in the next chapter, before turning to examine the Anglican ethos of Trinity, not always easily maintained. A chapter on curriculum development up to the 1950s is followed by a fascinating glimpse of what awaited students in elementary schools. We then return to Carmarthen for an account of the daily routine in its first century, aptly summed up in the word 'spartan'. The author then deals with the response of Trinity to the two world wars of this century. The college has always included Welsh in its curriculum, with varying degrees of enthusiasm, but no one can doubt the gradually improving status of Welsh at Trinity since 1945, and Dr Grigg is surely right in concluding that 'the Welsh language today is in its healthiest position since the foundation of the college'. After a chapter on recreation and sport, the final two chapters sketch developments in the college since 1945, including the admission of female students from 1957. The last twenty-five years have been a period of continuous change at Carmarthen, as in all institutions of higher education, with an enforced diversification of courses. No longer are all students training to be teachers. Since 1988 the full-time staff has increased from 58 to over 100, and student numbers have risen from about 650 to over 1,700. The eleven appendices cover, among much else, a list of principals and useful statistics on student numbers during the history of the college. What of the future? Dr Grigg refers in his penultimate paragraph to the possibility of a merger with University of Wales, Lampeter, but this now appears to be an unlikely development, to this reviewer's regret. Trinity has, however, maintained its 'foundation interests of bilingualism,