Welsh Journals

The final section highlights contemporary developments in education and discusses the POPAT scheme, a method of teaching reading to young children. Following its translation into Welsh at Trinity College, the scheme has been shown to be particularly useful in accelerating the learning process for readers of Welsh. Although this is a specialist article in educational research which does not sit entirely comfortably with the remainder of the material, it is, nevertheless, an appropriate ending for the volume since it demonstrates the involvement of the present staff at Trinity in the Welsh dimension of work which has international relevance. Essays which would not otherwise be read together have been forged into a collection that derives its cohesion from the wide-ranging interests of a teacher and academic who was inspired by the history, literature and landscapes of both rural and industrial Wales and whose personal history reflected the diversity of the Welsh historical experience: a diversity which is shown here to be fruitful and productive, if potentially dangerous. In rejecting a definitive account of Welsh history and culture, the editors have provided new insights into the past which readers of this journal will wish to explore. SIAN RHIANNON WILLIAMS Cardiff FRANCIS Fukuyama AND THE END OF History. By Howard Williams, David Sullivan and Gwynn Matthews. University of Wales Press, Cardiff, 1997. Pp. 203. £ 12.95 paperback, £ 25.00 hardback. This is a book that has achieved a certain degree of notoriety because of the controversial thesis that it advances. Francis Fukuyama has contended that history has, or is about to, come to an end. Not in the sense that events have ceased to happen, but in the sense that ideals by which we have organized our lives have been exposed as seriously flawed, with the exception of liberal democracy. It may always be under threat from practical internal contradictions, but as an ideal it cannot be improved upon. The authors of the book under review give a very careful and balanced exposition of the subtlety of Fukuyama's argument, and defend him against many of the cruder interpretations of. his detractors. It is written in a clear and accessible way and sets the main thesis in an intellectual context-the philosophical tradition of the end of history, Karl Popper's criticisms of historicism, and the eschatological history of Western religion.