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foot. He must be at home, too, with all types of maps. The past published works of Mr. Randall have emphasised the importance of such an approach. His new book is in many ways a testimony to its value. The book consists of seven studies on various topics based on lectures delivered over a long period of years. The studies are prefixed by a chapter on the geological background of the old lordship of Glamorgan. This chapter and the second chapter on the river systems of the Vale give unity to the whole book for the author is primarily concerned with the "influence of geographical and geological controls upon the development of historical events." The nature of the Glamorgan rocks, its surface soil and the lie of its land are factors which are utilised throughout the studies to illuminate and solve problems to which the written records cannot always be expected to give an answer. In his chapter on the form and sites of villages, for example, Mr. Randall plausibly argues from the Glamorgan evidence that the existence of a grain-producing soil rather than any racial predilection was responsible for the compact village as opposed to a landscape of scattered countryside and offers the rough generalisation that "as rainfall increases the compact village declines". The author shows, too, how the presence of permeable rocks, unable to hold large quantities of water over long periods, has tended to limit the size of villages which have always been dependent on an adequate water supply. This lack of water explains the absence of water mills in the area of the "Laleston Upland" and the erection of windmills in the parishes of Newton Nottage and Wick. These examples give some idea of the author's use of the purely physical evidence. The evidence of the written records, however, is never neglected. In his chapter on Newton Nottage Mr. Randall combines his knowledge of the topography of the area with evidence drawn from the Inquisitions post mortem, the seventeenth-century surveys and unpublished estate maps to provide a valuable and satisfying supplement to Henry Knight's account of the parish. Most local historians, however, will perhaps turn first to the last and longest chapter on the background of the Norman conquest in which the author attempts to provide some explanation for the efficiency and per- manency of the conquest of Glamorgan. His argument briefly stated is that the Vale on the eve of the conquest contained a mixed population, the result of pre-conquest colonisation by Irish, Norse and Anglo-Saxon settlers. This population, unsympathetic to movements for Welsh independence, was ready to acquiesce to Norman rule. Since the Normans had nothing to fear from a rising in the Vale, they sited their early castles at strategic posi- tions to guard the approaches from the west and north. Though few will disagree with the main lines of the argument, this chapter could have been improved if the author had arranged his material to better effect. He devotes, for example, an inordinate amount of space to the Irish influence which he concedes was never strong, which might have been more profitably used. Scattered throughout the text of the book are vague, isolated allusions to Anglo-Saxon settlement in the Vale before the conquest of Glamorgan but they are nowhere effectively tied together. The nature and extent of this settlement is admittedly a matter of speculation