Review of 'The Making of the British Landscape' by Nicholas Crane

A bit of a disappointment. Lots of things that I would have expected to be in there weren't...no mention of the Forestry Commission, for example, or the creation of the New Forest, or the Charter of the Forests, or game laws. Something of an over-concentration on towns once they get going, and on the built forms therein, rather at the expense of the landscape itself - even though he acknowledges that towns even today don't make up the greater part of the landscape in this country. 

And within the towns no examination of come all the good bits came to be owned by a few aristocrats, nor how they managed to keep them - and why they so much want to. Nothing about the various attempts at a different politics of land - the Chartists land projects, the Henry George socialists, ideas about land tax. Not even the National Trust rates a mention.

Not much examination even of the idea that there is a 'British' landscape - even from the book it's clear that England, Wales and Scotland have very different landscapes, and that these were shaped by different geological, economic and cultural forces. That's just his default unit of examination, but it's not one that he reflects on very much.

Still, I did learn lots of things, particularly about the draining of the Fens and the end of Whittelsey Mere. I felt sad reading about the demise of the big wild animals in Britain, and I went to look up the various attempts to 'de-extinct' the aurochs. They've all failed - extinction really is forever.