Land of plenty
REBECCA ANDREW is inspired by an ambitious survey of the relationship between Britons and the land they live in
The Making of the British Landscape: From the Ice Age to the Present by Nicholas Crane Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 640 pages, £25
“To care about a place, you must know its story.” So says Nicholas Crane in his latest book, The Making of the British Landscape, an ambitious work that attempts to chronicle the nation’s landscape from the Ice Age to the present. This is a book about more than just the physical landscape, however. It is about the people of Britain and their enduring relationship to its hills, moors, waterways, trees, plains and coast. Indeed, a recurring theme within these pages (one that takes us to ritual, industrialised and militarised landscapes) is people’s tendency to invest locations with attachments.
Yet this relationship has not always been positive, and Crane charts repeated attempts to control landscapes and mould natural habitats for our own ends. Examples ranging from the ‘ hearth of the first reindeer hunter’ to the destruction of the last wildwood, and finally to ‘the glass spire of the Shard’ in presentday London, underline how out of sync with nature we can be. Alongside these, however, are numerous instances of our helplessness in the face of changing climactic conditions. Devastating events – such as the first ‘Little Ice Age’ around 6700 BC, tsunamis, and the long-lasting effects in the 1300s from volcanic eruptions hundreds of miles away – stress the role of climate in shaping how (and where) we live. It is clear throughout this story that Crane cares for the British landscape’s future as well as its past, and wants us to care too. As such, climate is not the only issue with presentday significance woven into the narrative. An exploration of the relationship with mainland Europe, immigration and our identity as an island nation makes for a thought-provoking read.
Crane also considers how other curious minds documented their surroundings in the past. We learn about early cartographers, geographers and topographers, among others. These include the indefatigable Celia Fiennes (“the first person to leave a record of visiting every county in England”), and HV Morton, motoring ‘‘ like Toad of Toad Hall” around the interwar countryside. Writing about Britain’s landscape was not without peril; from danger and disrepair on Britain’s highways (witnessed by Daniel Defoe) to the case of John Leland, Henry VIII’s “librarian-turned-topographer”, who “rode and wrote until he went mad”.
With all of this rich source material to hand, however, an obvious disappointment was the lack of footnotes, although the bibliography does contain many useful references. Despite spanning over 500 pages, the book is necessarily concise; while a thoroughly engaging overview, the reader is often left wanting to know more. This can be seen as one of the book’s strengths, though, hopefully prompting readers to go out and explore the landscape (or archives) for themselves. I for one intend to spend many future weekends searching out this land’s lost settlements, mounds and henges.
This is a book about more than just the physical landscape