A considered attempt to set out what we can know about the rulers of what is now Wales in the early medieval period Timothy Vennings new book does not shy away from problems of dating & interpretation in the use of the meagre source material. Venning takes a regional approach & rather than try to provide a water-tight narrative is happy to present different possibilities & traditions weighing up their likelihood & pointing the reader in the direction of further discussion as necessary. The book starts with coverage of the Iron Age background as well as the shadowy post-Roman era finishing with the period of Anglo-Norman expansion & Welsh resistance & co-existence for which we are on much firmer ground.