Welsh Journals

the Ordnance Survey historical series, for more details of the later Bronze Age and the Iron Age A and B periods would have been useful. It's also a pity that colour wasn't used more, although, as the author points out, that wasn't his fault. The age of Hywel Dda and the first Norman breakthrough at Montgomery is particularly well done; the interpretation of the Thirteenth Century wars of Llewellyn ap Iorwerth and his successor, Llewellyn ap Gruffydd, is also reveal- ing. Far from showing these later conflicts as a matter of raids and marches one sees them as coherent and complex military campaigns which illustrate the fundamental lessons of all strategy: the necessity of concentration, the ineffec- tuality of interior lines when faced with overwhelming strength, and signi- ficance of sea power. Llewellyn ap Gruffydd lost on all three counts. One musn't, however, let oneself be led astray by the clarity of the political maps. Frontiers and boundary lines, spheres of influence and administrative units may be wrongly seen as having present-day significance. 'After the death of Maredudd, Gwynedd, taking advantage of the attacks of the Northmen, broke away. In the troublesome time which followed, usurpers seized power in both north and south Here was a state of endemic warlordism where life was nasty, brutish and short, gangs of lightly armed infantry supported by a few horsemen carving out local empires, living by the sword and, as often as not, dying the same way. I cannot remember where we started But I am certain We were given no briefing. We pass empty banks and offices Filling-stations closed for the night. Men sleep hunched in the cabs Of lorries parked by the waste Lamplight drips down the white-tiled Soffit of the arch Low bridge — 12'6" Think we can just about clear it; Plaster mannequins nude in shuttered shopfronts Vaguely smile Feeling the ecstatic touch of furs. TRUCKS