Books and Records Wanted

THE VOYAGES AND CRUISES OF COMMODORE WALKER edited by R. E. Vaughan in the Seafarers Library published by Cassell in 1928. Write : Spectator Box 716. THE COLLECTED POEMS OF BASIL BUNTING(published Fulcrum) and COUNTRYMAN'S TOOLS (title possibly inaccurate : published Elmsford). M. Stephens, 17 Eters Road, Ealing, London W.13.

KITCHENER by Philip Magnus. Colonel Penton, 37 Belgrave Square. London SW1.

GOOD THINGS IN ENGLAND, subtitled : A Practical Cookery Book for Everyday Use. Edited by Florence White, Spectator Box 711.

WAGNER'S RING. Complete Solti boxed recording wanted Scratch free! Price please to Spectator Box 712.

ELLA FITZGERALD, early recordings wanted. Spectator Box 713.

SOMERSET Historical Descriptive Biographical. Published 1908 in Mates County Series by W. Mate & Sons Ltd. Bournemouth & London. Write, Si, C. Chancellor, Hunstrete House, Pensford, Bristol.

ClUILLER-COUCH: The Art of Reading ; The Art of Writing. J. E. Brown, 151, Kennington Road, London SE11 6SF

THE GREASY POLE by Reginald Bevins. Hodders 1965. Single copies or up to three wanted. 37, Queens Drive, Liverpool.

MACBEAN, Dictionary of Ancient Geography. Mainertzhagen, any titles. Write Spectator Box 720, URGENTLY WANTED. Copy of David Copperfield in ARABIC for research purposes. Borrow or buy. Mikdadi, Mallards Cottage. South Green Lane. Fingringhoe, Colchester CO5 70R.

KWAIDAN by Lafcadir Hearn. A Dictionary of Popes, Donald Attwood. Catholic Book Club. Church of the Word Incarnate, Charles Journet. Sheed & Ward. Major L. Hurst, 40, Purley Oaks Road, Sanderstead. Surrey.

LIGHT VERSE by A. A. Milne, J. B. Morton ('Beachcomber), D. B. Wyndham Lewis (*Timothy Shy') and A. P. Herbert (not the patriotic wartime poems). Also Poetical Works of Thomas Sackville, Earl of Dorset. Write ; Kingsley Antis, Gardnor House, Flask Walk, London NW3.

GRINLING GIBBONS by A. Tipping or D. Green. Also interested in other books about wood carving and wood carvers. Phone 01-546 8637.

JOY STREET, Numbers 2, 3, 4, 11 & 12. Pub. Blackwell, 1928-1938. Write : Spectator Box 715.

THE UNBOUND PROMETHEUS by David S. Landes (C UP.). THE ENGLISH CONSTITUTION by Walter Bagehot. Contact George Aird, 18 Hobart, Whitley Bay, N. Tyneside. Tel : Whitley Bay 22759.

S.P.E. TRACTS any condition Thomas, 11 Myrtle Road, Bristol, 852 88L.

the beauties of nature. Mynydd Illtud did not deserve to become just one more destination for the aimless driver in the family saloon.

But the centre wenrahead and the worst forebodings of its critics have been realised. It has become a magnet for the car-borne multitudes. The narrow farm road crossing the common has had to be widened to accommodate the pressure of traffic and even more ambitious road schemes have been mooted in spite of farmers' protests at the motorway mentality they disclose, the threat to grazing stock and the taking of land. a The centre's facilities, in addition to parking, lavatories, café, and information room, include a games field; obviously, contemplation of the view, the centre's alleged raison d'être, is not enough. In 1972, it welcomed its millionth visitor, and has continued to pull in the crowds ever since. These might justify the centre, but not what it has done to Mynydd Illtud: in microcosm it reflects the paradox of the national parks, that by creating a demand they begin to destroy themselves.

This National Park is posit ivelycrammed with centres. There are more than a hundred youth centres of one sort or another. A few years ago a county official suggested that, with the number amounting to seventy, a moratorium was called for, but the establishments continued to multiply. Having a country pursuits centre is a matter of prestige for some education authorities, even for activities that could well be conducted nearer home. The centres range from lock-up huts to converted country mansions, and the effectiveness of what they purvey leaves room for some doubt. At the height of last summer's drought, I saw a dozen boys and two adults spill out of an imposing van marked with the name of a large city education authority and proceed to light two fires within six feet of a large, tinder-dry forestry plantation.

The Forestry Commission itself has branched wholeheartedly into the tourist business in these parts, opening information centres, building rustic tables and benches for picnickers, laying out car parks, carving roads through the large blocks of conifers with which it has disfigured the mountains in years past. Councils are engaged in such superfluous refinements as laying concrete kerbs along lonely mountain roads, rooting up hedges, de-kinking and widening roads, like neurotic housewives for ever changing round the furniture. One of the strongest arguments in favour of public spending cuts is the restraint this should place on further piecemeal 'improvements'.

In the light of all this activity, there is consolation for those who resent the National Park being turned into an overannotated textbook for the passive and unadventurous in the knowledge that nature has a way of reclaiming her own. The draft report with its healthy signs of constructive back-peddling, might even be on the way to giving her a helping hand.