Welsh Journals

Jennings' film The Silent Village, and the illustrations of Welsh chapels by John Piper (not given in this book). It is a pity that Mr. Rowntree's pleasant picture of a chapel is not of a usual type, but of one which was formerly a theatre. Finally, I would like to see an explanation of the apparent classlessness of the majority of the Welsh. But Mr. Rhys Davies has told me a lot about Wales which I did not know. His book will give foreign countries where, I suspect, this series goes with some sort of indirect subsidy, an impression that Wales is a nation apart and not just a bit of England. The illustrations might have been better selected. I should have liked to have seen more Welsh artists-particularly more work by Innes and at least one by him in colour. And where are David Jones, Cedric Morris, Ceri Richards, Morland Lewis ? The illustrations should have done modern Welsh art as proud as the text does modern Welsh literature. The colour reproductions vary in quality. One of a lead mine in a valley in Carmarthenshire (John Warwick Smith) dated 1792, is reproduced in an unearthly green which cannot have been known at that date. The charming Paul Sandby of Conway Castle and the William Turner of Llanberis Pass are both coarsened by colour repro- duction so as almost to resemble L.M.S. Royal Academy posters. But the black-and-whites are good. JOHN BETJEMAN. Abstract Art The Paintings of Miro and Klee By NIALL MONTGOMERY BETWEEN the first part of the war and this current replay (Away), many of our favourite indoor games have been dismantled and reassembled under another name. Music is now something else, words are certainly not worth the paper they are printed on, and Art, in particular, is what M.G.M. shoots and cans for export from the Wall Street foothills. But from another part of the New Constantinople (Amstadamsa to you !) come two less standardised jobs recently published, and to each of them Mr. James Johnson Sweeney has put an able hand. Sweeney