The Making of the British Landscape: An Alternative History from the Ice Age to the Present

by Nicholas Crane

Hardcover, ?

Status

Available

Call number

914.1

Genres

Publication

Weidenfeld & Nicolson

Description

How much do we really know about the place we call 'home'? In this sweeping, timely book, Nicholas Crane tells the story of Britain. Over the course of 12,000 years of continuous human occupation, the British landscape has been transformed form a European peninsula of glacier and tundra to an island of glittering cities and exquisite countryside. In this geographical journey through time, we discover the ancient relationship between people and place and the deep-rooted tensions between town and countryside. From tsunamis to Roman debacles, from henge to high-rise and hamlet to metropolis, this is a book about change and adaptation. As Britain lurches towards a more sustainable future, it is the story of our age.

User reviews

LibraryThing member rakerman

Not to be confused with many other books also called The Making of the British Landscape.

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LibraryThing member CarltonC

Not having read a book like this about human geography before, I found this really enjoyable, with plenty of interesting anecdotes to illustrate the points being made. However, I feel that too much time was spent on the early chapters about prehistoric Britain, and too little descriptive analysis

of the past 100 to 150 years.

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LibraryThing member PDCRead

Britain is a unique country, not only does our little island have some of the planets oldest rocks in the Hebrides, but it is still being formed by waves in the present day. Starting way back in the Mesolithic, Nick Crane takes us back to the time when the glaciers were retreating and the first

Britons made their way across the land bridge from the continent and made their home here as the land surrendered to the waves. When we became an island, our resources and place on the gulf stream made it attractive for all sorts of visitors. The Romans were the first to try, but succeeded on the second attempt. And have been followed by a whole variety of others, including Saxons, Vikings, Normans and the Dutch. Each wave of people shaped and moulded the land to their needs leaving us with the landscape and cities that we had today. These ages were punctuated with significant events; wars, plagues, the land grabs of the enclosures and the industrial revolution; adding their own to what we have today.

For a small island we have so much history that is both deeply fascinating and complex. Nick Crane has had a good stab at distilling all of that into a single book, but it cannot be anymore that an overview. It is fairly well written, the narrative is full of detail and fascinating anecdotes, but I’m not completely sure why he has ended up writing a history book, though there is some overlap in what he has done with Coast. Overall, it is not bad. I have read most of his books so far, and I must say that I prefer his travel books to this.

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