Dr. Mike Benbough-Jackson is a proven local historian of quality and merit. He is an expert in the history of Ceredigion, especially the modern period. His PhD was titled 'Locating a Place and its People: Ceredigion and the Cardi c. 1760-2004' and he has published subsequent articles in Ceredigion (2003) and in Rural History: Economy, Society, Culture (2003). Until recently he was a lecturer at University of Wales Lampeter. He is due to take up a post as lecturer in History at Liverpool John Moores University.

Mike Benbough-Jackson's Cardiganshire volume is in a different league. If other volumes in the series match the quality of this one, then we will be in possession of a wonderful total history of Wales illuminated from its local roots for the first time. We are in no doubt at the end of this volume that we have read the work of a European historian of great promise. It is a measure of the distance that Welsh history has traveled in a generation. This is an inspired series whose time has come. Mike Benbough-Jackson is well served by the University of Wales Press, the book displaying the high editorial standards that we come to expect from this publisher, a national treasure as much as a national institution.'