THIS is the first Shell Guide to be published since
the war, and it will be welcome not only to those who are likely to travel in Shrop- shire but also to armchair travellers who appreciate the BetjemAn approach to church architecture, Victoriai railway stations, plan- tations of conifers, and so on. Old Salopians who remember their Sunday afternoon walks in the dreary countryside south of Shrews- bury will be pleased to see a photograph of the Shropshire and Montgomeryshire rail- way, and to be told that Mary Webb was married in Meole Bracechurch (a fact that may be new to them.). The Betjeman method has its drawbacks—among them a photo- graph of the Shrewsbury Eye, Ear , and Throat Hospital (Alfred Waterhouse, T881) but it abundantly justifies itself on the whole, both in text and illustration, though Harrison Ainsworth is probably not, the best authority for Charles II's adventures after Worcester. The book has one, serious fault—that the figures in brackets after the place-names often do not correspond to the appropriate numbered squares on the map at tle end of the book, as was presumably intended.
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