Taking stock

"The continuing success of the Royal Welsh Agricultural welsh Agricultural Society as it celebrates its centenary year in 2004 could hardly have been anticipated by the handful of individuals whose vision and commitment lay behind the founding of the Welsh National Agricultural Society as hundred years earlier. Indeed, during its early years the new society faced downright hostility from a range of determined opponents, and it would have to surmount many challenges before it became, by the 1980s, one of the three major agricultural societies in the United Kingdom." "This remarkable story of vision, growth, survival and success is traced by David W. Howell in fourteen chapters which cover the holding of the show at Aberystwyth from 1904 to 1909, the migratory years between 1910 and 1962 when some thirty-seven 'canvas towns' were erected in different towns in north and south Wales in alternate years, and the Society's fortunes from the time of its move to a permanent site at Llanelwedd from 1963. The book is enlivened by illuminating and often entertaining anecdotes and a generous sprinkling of archive photographs."--BOOK JACKET.