First, I want to say thank you, wherever he is today, to Mr. Jones, himself a Welsh patriot, for recommending this book to me nine years ago. What these two books (collected in one volume) are is an invaluable resource that takes a reader on a village-by-village, region-by-region tour of 12th century Wales. Gerald, a Benedictine monk in royal service, had a scholarly eye and a novelist's touch in describing what he encountered on his trips thru the westernmost nation on the island of Britain. Gerald tells of a Wales still independent from England, still Celtic and very much a fiercely independent state in its own right. He describes the hair styles, clothing, dining preferences, architecture, religious and historical sites (including a legend of the burial place of one King Arthur) and does it in a way that never loses the spark of immediacy, even for those of us centuries in Gerald's future. This book reads a lot like a piece from National Geographic, only it's nine-hundred years old! Without Gerald, we never would get to meet so many interesting human beings who once lived out lives in a time and place far removed from where we dwell today. This descriptive memoir is an improbable survivor, and a treasure in the collective library of the human race.