Welsh Journals

revolution and its consequences (1870-1914), examined by Bill Jones. 'Industrial Wales', he tells us, 'dominates the picture' (p. 147). He is, of course, right to say that in 1911 nearly one in three males in employment was a collier, but he too often neglects his own caveat that 'industrial Wales was not all Wales' (p. 147). His chapter is heavily orientated to industrial south Wales upon which he is an authority. He has no real awareness of rural society and its problems which led to the massive report of the royal commission on land, mightily important to Welsh historians. Tom Ellis, Henry Richard and a host of others have vanished from the scene and the only reference to Uoyd George artlessly speaks of him as 'Wales's most successful politician' (p. 147). The Aberdare Report is wholly ignored as is the heroism of ordinary people which led to the foundation of the Aberystwyth College and to its survival against the heaviest odds. A bare reference to the University of Wales conceals the fact that it was appropriately called 'the People's University', surely deserving grateful atten- tion in The People of Wales. Nor do we gather that this was the golden age of the Welsh-language press whose outpouring of books, journals and newspapers is a vital source. Thomas Parry's chapter on the Welsh Renaissance in Wales Throughout the Ages has nothing remotely comparable here. The dragon does indeed have two tongues. These necessary observations should not, however, obscure the fact that within limitations, presumably self-imposed, there is much of value in Bill Jones's contribution. The two last chapters, 1914-1945, by Mari A. Williams, and 1945-85, by Chris Williams, are balanced and wide-ranging, though it is not clear why the millennial survey comes to a halt in 1985 within sight of shore (apart from a short and less than satisfactory addendum). In his Conclusion, Dai Smith draws attention to other BBC programmes illustrative of Welsh life. He returns to broadcasting in a new edition of Wales! Wales? which elicited a lively response upon its first appearance in 1984. Apart from some alterations, the main change is the addition of two new chapters (first and last). In the first he declares that 'broadcasting in Wales will increasingly need to stress the achievements and traditions of the majority experience in twentieth-century Wales in the language of that majority, the English tongue that has become our principal Welsh means of communication' (p. 35). In the last he searchingly reflects upon Aneurin Bevan whose views, he believes, can unite the Wales of two languages. The new edition is thus a tract for the times which will be welcomed by many. J. GWYNN WILLIAMS Bangor