Cylchgronau Cymru

Chwiliwch trwy dros 450 o deitlau a 1.2 miliwn o dudalennau

SHORT NOTICES Cymru Mewn Hanes, Cyfrol I: Y Goresgynwyr (University of Wales Press, Cardiff, 1966. Pp. xvi, 217, 10s. 6d.) is a translation by Sir Thomas Parry-Williams of David Fraser's admirable textbook, The Invaders (reviewed, ante, II, no. 1, 107). The original volume is now the best school book on the early history of Wales, and this translation will commend itself to those who teach through the medium of Welsh. Mr. Fraser's lively and informed narrative loses nothing in its translation by so distinguished a Welsh prose writer as Sir Thomas Parry-Williams, while the technical vocabulary of archaeology is interpreted with great skill. A. J. Roderick (ed.), Medieval Welsh History (Historical Association leaflet TH. 14, 1967) presents school teachers with an outline course in Welsh history, revising that published in 1953. Its recapitulation of the main developments in the millenium and a half between the Roman conquest and the Act of Union is accompanied by a suggested syllabus of topics for the classroom and a brief bibliography. As long as medieval Wales continues to deter writers of text books, this guide will prove invaluable. But as long as the period 1282-1536 remains neglected by scholars, this booklet will lack the coherence and sureness of touch in dealing with these centuries which it displays elsewhere. The Historical Association has also published another useful pamphlet, The Teaching of Welsh History in Secondary Schools (TH. 23, 1966). Prepared by Professor A. H. Dodd, this will undoubtedly prove of value to '0 level' and 'A level' students at school, and possibly to first-year under- graduates as well. Professor Dodd helpfully lists ten major themes which afford keys to the study of medieval and modern Welsh history, ranging from the Teutonic invasions in the post-Roman period to the political complexities of the nineteenth century. The sections on 'Recent Work and Current Trends' and the Bibliography, however, are not wholly satisfactory; some of the inclusions and exclusions are equally puzzling. No reference is made to works in the Welsh language; thus the books of R. T. Jenkins, for instance, do not appear. While the bibliographical section on Tudor Wales is admirable, the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries receive less adequate treatment. It is odd to see no mention of David Williams's John Frost, of Brinley Thomas's writings on Welsh industrialization, or of recent pioneering works by Gwyn A. Williams, P. D. G. Thomas or Ieuan Gwynedd Jones. For recent politics, Sir Reginald Coupland's Welsh and Scottish Nationalism and Sir Frederick Rees's The Problem of Wales ought to be added, as should several recent biographies. Finally, it is difficult to see the purpose, in a pamphlet of this kind, of including lengthy reference to works still only 'in prepara- tion'. For schoolchildren, surely publication, not preparation, ought to be the touchstone.