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'A formidable, brave and important book' Robert Macfarlane Who owns England? Behind this simple question lies this country's oldest and best-kept secret. This is the history of how England's elite came to own our land, and an inspiring manifesto for how to open up our countryside once more. This book has been a long time coming. Since 1086, in fact. For centuries, England's elite have covered up how they got their hands on millions of acres of our land, by constructing walls, burying surveys and more recently, sheltering behind offshore shell companies. But with the dawn of digital mapping and the Freedom of Information Act, it's becoming increasingly difficult for them to hide. Trespassing through tightly-guarded country estates, ecologically ravaged grouse moors and empty Mayfair mansions, writer and activist Guy Shrubsole has used these 21st century tools to uncover a wealth of never-before-seen information about the people who own our land, to create the most comprehensive map of land ownership in England that has ever been made public. From secret military islands to tunnels deep beneath London, Shrubsole unearths truths concealed since the Domesday Book about who is really in charge of this country - at a time when Brexit is meant to be returning sovereignty to the people. Melding history, politics and polemic, he vividly demonstrates how taking control of land ownership is key to tackling everything from the housing crisis to climate change - and even halting the erosion of our very democracy. It's time to expose the truth about who owns England - and finally take back our green and pleasant land.… (more)
User reviews
To understand how we are in this situation you have to head back in our history nearly 1000 years, to the time when William the Bastard became William the Conqueror. His victory over Harold allowed him to have the largest land grab and to reward favourite people in his court with lands and property. He commissioned the Doomsday report, to ensure that he hadn’t missed any land that could be of some benefit to the crown.
Some of the descendants of those people granted land by William still own it.
The Crown owns large tracts, as you’d expect and pays tax on the income from those lands. However, it uses its two Duchy’s (Cornwall and Lancaster) to ensure that it isn’t paying tax on other vast swathes of land it has spread all around the country. A lot of land is owned by organisations like the National Trust, the Forestry Commission, the Church owns a lot too, but not as much as they used to, plus other big businesses now own substantial amounts. However, most of the elite and aristocracy don’t want people knowing how much land they have nor do they want you to know how much they are able to claim in benefits from it. They have built walls, moved villages and used the enclosure acts to steal the common land for their own use. All to stop us discovering exactly how much they own.
They now use modern tools to hide their assets away from us and the taxman, so he discovers that lots of land is now owned by shell companies based in tax havens. But the same tools that enable them to do this, can be used to answer the question posed; who owns England? Guy Shrubsole has spent lots of time exploring some of the vast estates and tramping over moors and entering empty Mayfair mansions as well as using the modern tools of digital mapping to answer this question.
This book is his expose of the truths of land ownership and what we can do to wrestle back control of this very limited asset. He has a lot of sensible suggestions on how we can ensure that this tiny elite are no longer the sole beneficiaries of the wealth and power that is derived from land. This struggle will be a long and tedious one as these people will not want to give up land that they have held for time immemorial. He is impassioned about this subject and writes in a very clear way with very well thought out solutions to solve the problem. As you read it you can sense his fury that in the modern age this is still an issue.
It is a must-read for anyone remotely interested in our countryside and landscapes and a call to virtual arms to apply the pressure needed to change the system for the better.
Why wouldn't the owners of great swathes of England want to stand up and proudly proclaim their good fortune? Answer: Because, then we, the hoi poloi, might start asking questions about the way they steward our
This book doesn't fully answer the question in the title because, despite years of work by investigative journalists, the state keeps those of the 'right kind', safe from prying eyes.
I wonder what the Ukip, anti foreigner brigade would make of the fact that the great English landowners were largely those that either came across with William, the soon to be conqueror, or those Angles who assisted the invaders. Still, those people are slowly losing their estates to... Russian Mafioso and off shore companies.... Rule Britannia, Britannia rules the...er...er...e