Welsh Journals

Portrait of the Brecon Beacons. Edmund J. Mason. Robert Hale, London. 1975. Price: £ 2.80. This is one of a series of books devoted to 'portraits' of different areas of the British Isles, and focusses on 'the triangle of fascinating countryside formed by Builth, Abergavenny and Ammanford, embracing the Brecon Beacons National Park with the Beacons at its centre'. Although this book provides more a history than a geo- graphy of the area, the text does form a valuable companion to the official National Park handbook. In the form of a modern man's topography, the material is sub-divided largely by areas within the Beacons, and specific areas are dealt with in successive chapters. The book is designed as a 'portrait', and makes no pretences of being either a tourist guide or an academic study of the area. Instead the author provides colourful stories and anecdotes of local person- alities of the past, and offers stimulating insights into some of the folk lores of the area. Most attention in the book is focussed on the towns, architecture and archaeology of the area, at the expense of the general scenery, landforms and other physical landscape elements. In many places the text is dominated by archaeological detail (for example Chapter 1), betraying the author's principal interest in this field, and if the text is in places rather verbose, the excellence of the many black and white photographs stimulate the visual senses as compensation. The two maps which show locations of places referred to in the text (these references are given both in Welsh and as English translations) serve this purpose well, but their visual impact could perhaps be improved either by adopting a less Victorian style, or by the introduction of colour. The lack of grid references to the many places mentioned in the text (and valuably listed in a comprehensive index at the end of the book) is frustrating, and to read the text with an Ordnance Survey map at hand is extremely time consuming and tiresome. At the risk of turning the book into a tourist guide, it would be some- what more attractive if it were easier to locate the places rapidly. It is perhaps unjust to dwell on these rather academic matters, at the expense of the enthusiasm with which the author writes, and which he very successfully inspires in the reader. Chris C. Park