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Book Review |
H. J. Siddle, E. N. Bromhead & M. G. Bassett (eds). National Museums & Galleries of Wales, Geological Series No 18, 2000. £13.50 softback; 116pp. ISBN 0-7200-0485-3.
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Recently, the Rt. Hon. Helen Liddell, UK Minister for Energy and Competitiveness in Europe, remarked that ‘whenever I hear of geology I know it must be bad news’. At first glance, this book appears to support the Minister’s point. In South Wales, on Friday 21 October 1966, a landslide from an unstable coal refuse bank swept through Aberfan village killing 144 people, 116 of them children. It remains the UK’s worst landslide disaster. However, during the years following the Aberfan tragedy, South Wales has flourished as an internationally important centre for landslide research, mitigation and management. This book highlights the excellent work carried out and provides a superb overview of the landslide geology of the South Wales Coalfield. Importantly, it also reports the ‘good news’.
The book itself started life as the field excursion guide for the very successful 8th International Symposium on Landslides held in Cardiff, 26–30 June 2000. However, compilation of the guide also generated an outstanding collection of papers the quality of which greatly exceeded all expectations. Thanks to the perspicacity of the National Museums & Galleries of Wales these papers have been published as this stand-alone record and thereby made accessible to a much wider audience.
The editors have succeeded in cramming into a mere 116 pages, an impressive array of 28 landmark papers involving 18 authors as well as a comprehensive bibliography. The short, punchy papers provide a useful introduction to the region and summaries of the key contributions to landslide research as well as
