The Making of the British Landscape: From the Ice Age to the Present

by Nicholas Crane

How much do we really know about the place we call 'home'? In this sweeping, timely book, Nicholas Crane tells the story of Britain.

The British landscape has been continuously occupied by humans for 12,000 years, from the end of the Ice Age to the twenty-first century. It has been transformed from 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.

The twin drivers of landscape change - climate and population - have arguably wielded as much influence on our habitat as monarchs and politics. From tsunamis and farming to Roman debacles and industrial cataclysms, from henge to high-rise and hamlet to metropolis, this is a book about change and adaptation. AS Britain lurches from an exploitative past towards a more sustainable future, this is the story of our age.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Nature, Science, Geography, British Literature, Travel

596 pages, Kindle Edition

First published March 10, 2016

About the author

Distilled from Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas... accessed 07-Aug-2012:

Nicholas Crane (born 6 May 1954) is an English geographer, explorer, writer and broadcaster was born in Hastings, East Sussex, but grew up in Norfolk. He attended Wymondham College from 1967 until 1972, then Cambridgeshire College of Arts & Technology (CCAT), a forerunner to Anglia Ruskin University, where he studied Geography.

In his youth he went camping and hiking with his father and explored Norfolk by bicycle which gave him his enthusiasm for exploration. In 1986 he located the pole of inaccessibility for the Eurasia landmass travelling with his cousin Richard; their journey being the subject of the book “Journey to the Centre of the Earth.”

He married Annabel Huxley in 1991. They live in Chalk Farm in north-west London and have three children.

In 1992/3 he embarked on an 18-month solo journey, walking 10,000 kilometres from Cape Finisterre to Istanbul. He recounted that expedition in his book “Clear Waters Rising: A Mountain Walk Across Europe” which won the Thomas Cook Travel Book Award in 1997. He made a television self-documentary of the journey in “High Trails to Istanbul” (1994).

Together with Richard Crane he was awarded the 1992 Mungo Park Medal by the Royal Scottish Geographical Society for his journeys in Tibet, China, Afghanistan and Africa.

His 2000 book “Two Degrees West” described his walk across Great Britain in which he followed the eponymous meridian as closely as possible. More recently he published a biography of Gerard Mercator, the great Flemish cartographer.

In November 2007 he debated the future of the English countryside with Richard Girling, Sue Clifford, Richard Mabey and Bill Bryson as part of CPRE's annual Volunteers Conference

Since 2004 he has written and presented four notable television series for BBC Two: Coast, Great British Journeys, Map Man and Town.

Reviews

[Geevee · Rating 4 out of 5]

Enjoyable, informative and a solid overview of the British landscape from the time of land formations and the ice age to modernity.

The achievement here is to fit in a sweeping tour of a geography and the changes made by man that touches everyone who lives or visits Britain.

The coverage and detail was big but at the same time readable; although at times I wanted more info that explained some aspects but that is this reader. What worked for me was how influential some aspects were: I knew of the marks made by Rome and their roads and Hadrian's wall, and of course railways, canals and airfields but I'd not considered (in this books context) that of the clearances, the Black Death and trade. This last by the granting of a market and how that influenced not only the town where the market was granted by royal charter but the surrounding areas.

Transport and warfare and industry (from early bronze making to modern) feature heavily. Sometimes as strands but more often of course as linked partners. Again the Roman roads built to supply outward garrisons to naval/mercantile shipping facilities (dry docks, ports and storage facilities) to airfields - some 4000 by WWII's end - and airports. One area I was pleased to see the author cover was that of defences. Those defences that register with the majority of people such as castles and earthworks but the perhaps today lesser known pillboxes, tank traps, underground bunkers and factories of WWII.

Surprisingly for me the author quotes a statistic at the end of the book: 98% of Britain has not been built on.
For those of us living in here, and in England especially, this can seem a far-fetched figure, but a journey from London to Birmingham and onto Newcastle by train - that iron road that transformed Britain's towns, cities and livelihoods in the 19th century - does help remind one of the green and pleasant land we have under our feet here; importantly too is how yesterday's grey, smoke-filled, poisonous industrial landscapes can rejuvenate. The challenge, as the author ends the book on, is how do we keep making changes to our landscape that also means we continue to nurture, protect and use the wealth and natural richness without destroying, poisoning or covering over habitats and countryside.

[Richard Carter · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book wasn’t what I expected. Not that that’s a bad thing.

From its title, I assumed The Making of the British Landscape was going to be all about geophysics, geology and physical geography: plate tectonics, mountain-building, fault lines, erosion, glaciation, cwms, clints, grykes, drumlins, escarpments, longshore-drift, all that malarkey we did in geography. While glaciation, in particular, features prominently in the early chapters, and the impact of climate-change is a recurring theme, this book is far more about how the land was altered over thousands of years by human beings: it’s about how we made the British landscape with our tree-felling, earthworks, religious observances, settlements, farming practices, industry, transport networks, and so on.

The former archaeologist in me was pleased to see Nicholas Crane dedicate around a third of this book to British prehistory. We tend to forget the majority of our island story occurred before the Roman Conquest—some of it, indeed, as Crane describes, before Britain was even an island. But we do, as you would expect, eventually get round to the Romans, Anglo-Saxons, Vikings, Normans, and everyone else, bringing us right through to the current day. It is a magnificent and highly enjoyable read.

I did have a few minor quibbles with the book. In the introduction to his bibliography, Crane explains his decision to avoid disrupting the narrative with 2,721 footnotes. Although I understand why he did this, in the early chapters in particular, I was sometimes frustrated by not being sure which statements were generally agreed views, and which were Crane’s own conjectures. Either way, judging by the extensive bibliography, it is clear that Crane has done his homework.

In the same early chapters, Crane also occasionally adopts the device of not referring to prehistoric and early historic places by their modern names. Whether this is for dramatic effect, or to avoid anachronistic labels, I found it irritating: Where the hell is he actually talking about? I kept wondering. In most cases, I could guess an answer by consulting the bibliography—but I felt I shouldn’t have to guess.

Finally, as a proud inhabitant of the region, I was disappointed by the relatively small amount of space in this book dedicated to the North of England, compared with Scotland, Wales, and (in particular) the South of England. But this is a complaint I could (and do) make about many books.

But, minor quibbles aside, I thoroughly enjoyed this ambitious and entertaining book.

Recommended.

[AnnaG · Rating 5 out of 5]

New and interesting way to see British history.

[Paul · Rating 3 out of 5]

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.

[Dr G · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have mixed feelings about this book.

At one point, Crane mentions how the book had taken many years to complete. I think a distinct danger arises when this occurs, and that is that the author continues collecting possibly germane material year upon year; then, when the writing starts, there is some reluctance to discard any of the hard-gotten ore.

I do not think Crane ever really decided what the book's purpose was. Was he a latter-day Wainwright journalising his personal interactions with landscape? Was he writing as a poet, as a scientist, or as a common-man employing the vernacular? Was his focus archaeological/historical, or geological, or human-geographical? In the end, the text jumps about, paying homage to each of these and, on occasions, inevitably dealing with some of them inadequately or with only superficial knowledge. My understanding is that some of his comments about "hill-forts" and the very first Roman site-works do not accord with current archaeological thinking.

One moment, he is lyricising: "The water of the Mendips connected two worlds. In places, streams gurgled and clattered between sunlit banks like any normal watercourse, but then they disappeared through voids into the underworld.… Some of the passages led to echoing caverns decorated with pillars and tendrils which glistened and writhed in the flame-light of torches."

At another, he writes: "...labourers hacked at veins with antler picks, chucking the rock back to others..." or "...that is an awful lot of grub..." or "It was Conqueror’s bollocks”, and refers to the "knackered soldiers” and “the poor bloody soldiers”. It is almost as though Crane is becoming tired of the whole project and periodically lets forth with irritated, working man's argot. Unfortunately, the editor was possibly becoming impatient as well, and failed to impose some sort of editorial discipline. A meticulous editor would also have corrected the confusion between "homogenous" and "homogeneous"; would not have allowed the silly description of architect John Nash as “maritally challenged" or of George Vulliamy, as "the ancestor of an immigrant clockmaker", when George was presumably the clockmaker's descendant rather than his ancestor.

I found it very frustrating that on a number of occasions, workings of the land were described in some detail but without identifying them with modern names or precise locations. Was that site in fact what we know as Stonehenge? Was this settlement on that river actually London ("Londinium"; "Londonjon")? There is a reasonable number of photographs in the book, but many of them are generic, where specific illustrations of text would have been valuable.

The book has a rather arcane approach to the rest of the world. From time to time there are references to Mesopotamia, and to Europe and, very occasionally to Greece. As far as I can recall, however, there is not a single reference to Chinese or Japanese developments. There is a random lack of system to all this which added to my frustration.

Having presented these criticisms to begin with, I should add that I think the book is, nevertheless, a valuable resource which provided me with much new information and a valuable long-view perspective. It is at its strongest, I think, in the early chapters describing natural shaping of the landscape, and perhaps some of the early human habitations. And I appreciated the hypothetical calculations of man-hours which would have been involved in many of the large-scale prehistoric constructions. Crane makes the valid point that these works reveal a sense of community, as well as a power in some leader's hands to deploy such numbers. I wonder if they also reveal a need in early man simply to have something to do when hunting and gathering was not a full-time occupation.

I am glad I have read this book; I have learned from it, and I shall have it handy for future reference. What a pity that such monumental work is spoiled by shortcomings that could quite easily have been eliminated.

[Alex Sarll]

I began this book on a trip to the West Country, which I always think of as Britain's heartland, and where the decision to punish the Lib Dems for coalition with the Tories by instead electing Tories was part of what made the EU referendum possible. As such, I would often find myself looking up from the early chapters across the vales, and wrestling with the great mystery: how can such a beautiful land, which once made the world shake, have come to be populated by such petty, self-defeating nincompoops? I intend no especial slight on Devon here; it's a synecdoche for the whole damn nation, at least for as long as the nation holds together. After all, it's in London that our idiot leaders today pulled the trigger to fire the shot that maims the land; I can't help picturing them as a gaggle of stupid children getting ready for a Fisher King lookalike competition, all so very convinced they look so terribly majestic as the big kids of the tabloid press egg the knife party on. How topical, then, to be reminded of the cycles in British deep time. Elm disease, say; we all know about the Dutch version that denuded the countryside last century, but it was news to me that much the same had already happened millennia earlier. Similarly, we might consider Article 50 the second-time-as-farce of the tsunami which 8,000 years ago devastated the east of England-to-be, pretty much finished off Doggerland, and thus finally separated Britain from the continent. The archaeological record suggests this made our forebears increasingly isolated, fearful and backwards - though gung-ho Brexiteers unimpressed by such defeatist talk will be delighted to hear that catching up with Europe technologically, and then overtaking it, was the work of a mere 4,000 years. In the interim, we seem to have spent most of our time and effort on dotting the landscape with enormous cock-shaped temenoi, and accumulating the ancient world's biggest rubbish heaps. Presumably this is what that Question Time audience member - clearly an expert on the nation's history - meant when she talked about how Britain had been a light unto the world for thousands of years. Certainly it seems a plausible foretaste of what we can expect from a Britain freed from 'red tape' and 'cosmopolitan elites'.

Enough. It's not fair on Crane to use him as a stick with which to beat the junta; yes, the back cover does have the Daily Heil describing him as a treasure, but he's clearly a good enough egg to delight in using the archaic spelling 'cuntery' far more often than is strictly necessary when quoting antiquary John Leland. From the withdrawal of the glaciers through to the ascent of the Shard, he manages that incantatory quality which sheer directed accumulation of facts can sometimes take on*. Very occasionally there's a statement which took me aback - the bald assertion that "Rituals required numbers" seems at odds with everything from shamanic vision quests to Western ceremonial magic - but for the most part even assertions regarding the uncertain cultures of prehistory feel like they've earned the sense of sweeping plausibility with which they're presented. There's far too much here to take in; I'll remember bits (the importance of hazel, which I've never really considered as part of the arboreal A-list, to early humans) while knowing that for much of the rest I'll be returning to this as a reference book. But it is worth reading the whole grand sweep of it, the British history book other British history books take place within. Be warned: every 20 pages or so, you will run into a cringeworthy phrasing which suggests a geography teacher trying to be hip (an advance in axe technology, for instance, described as "weapons of mass construction") - I can only presume these are connected to Crane's appearances on Coast, the Sunday teatime perennial seemingly bent on proving everything fractals told us about how from one perspective Britain's coastline could be considered to be infinitely long. Sigh at them if you will; I did, but the quality of the book as a whole is well worth those occasional blots on the Landscape.

*If you don't like 'We Didn't Start the Fire' or the entranced lists of heroes in Kavalier & Clay, I make no promises that you'll get the same delight from this as I did.

[Jt Raymond · Rating 3 out of 5]

a very readable book. a new perspective considering man's history viewed from the impact on our landscape.

I felt it ran out of steam when it reached the modern day focusing on certain areas rather than our impact as a whole on our landscape. but overall a good read.

[Neil Bradford · Rating 5 out of 5]

Engrossing — rekindled my love of geography!

[Judith · Rating 5 out of 5]

A very informative overview of the history of the British Landscape. Much more comprehensive than Hoskins book about the English landscape. Well written and very readable.

[ClareT · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nicholas Crane looks at the changes within the landscape in Britain in terms of human settlements and the effect they had on the wilderness that was Britain after the Ice Age. He looks as ups and downs in population whether through climatic cycles or pestilence and invasion. The making of some of the early monuments and barrows is discussed including how long they would have taken to build / dig which did put things into context. He also covers some of the changes in buildings in the larger towns - including Roman baths and temples through to more modern additions to architecture.

I went through various cycles with this book. I found the early parts of the book really difficult. It made me realise that my knowledge of the British Isles is based on towns, rather than rivers or geological features. Of course 10,000 years ago there were no towns. And, not coming from the south of England I found it difficult to work out where some of the areas were based on them being downland or near a particular river. A map would have been really helpful in the first couple of parts of the book - but there was nothing to help. Even a reference to modern day Britain might have been useful. I didn't want to resort to the internet and interrupt my reading.
The account from medieval Britain onwards was easier to follow, but whilst I realise London was by far the largest city, I am sure there were others that were just as important within the landscape, but most were glossed over.
That said I did actually enjoy this book, much more than I thought I would when I was trawling through the earlier sections. I do need to improve my knowledge of the British Isles and I did learn quite a lot. I found some of the accounts of the settlements in Orkney fascinating and was glad there were illustrative photos.
The book is connected together because of the constant reference to 'place' - whether this is legitimate I can't say, but it did feel a bit of a laboured point as it was brought up again and again.
It does have a lot of references in the back, a couple of which I am going to buy, but, if the book is ever reprinted please include a map because I almost gave up reading in the first few chapters.

[Mark McKerracher · Rating 3 out of 5]

The title of this book is pretty accurate: it tells the story of how the British landscape has evolved into its present state since the Ice Age. It's a title that has been used before (by archaeologist Francis Pryor), but this book is rather different to Pryor's: it has more of a travelogue feel and, despite being clearly underpinned by plenty of research, it could not really be used as a scholarly guide to archaeological sites and landscape history. This is understandable, since Crane is a geographer and renowned walker rather than an archaeologist. He is known for (amongst other things) being the eponymous 'Map Man' in a TV series of that name - which makes it all the more inexplicable that this book does not include a single map. It's also a bit strange that he likes to invent his own terminology: for example, the enigmatic prehistoric monument of Silbury Hill becomes, weirdly, the Great Polyhedron, as if that were a more authentic Neolithic moniker. Worryingly, much later in the story, Neil Kinnock is referred to as "a future Prime Minister". Surely Crane is old enough to remember that although Mr Kinnock was Leader of the Opposition for some years, he never became Prime Minister (and since he is now a septuagenarian peer, I doubt he still has his eyes set on 10 Downing Street). Where Crane excels, however, is writing about landscapes that he clearly knows well from first-hand experience, and in vignettes of memoir that show his attachment to and love of the British landscape. If the whole book were imbued with this travel memoir feel - and stripped of factual errors and odd terminology - I'd give it an extra star.

[booksbyg · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked reading this but I have issues with the seemingly 'skippy' editorial style at times. Long witty descriptions have you waiting and scratching your head until you get to the end of a whole paragraph/section to realise 'oh that is what he's on about'.
As a geographer and somewhat naïve historian I also have issues with some of his 'facts' - such as, claiming that Wales had no towns in periods where I am absolutely certain that at least Carmarthen was a town from and indeed before Roman times as I am sure were others - there is a lack of flow in his chapters, they skip, they stagnate and sometimes they are absolute gems of writing. I would recommend it to anyone who has an interest in landscape and history but as a serious tome for research it is but a starting step. I feel overall that there is a lot missing from Crane's stumbling walk into Britain's Landscape History. I forgive him his rambling style however, as it was indeed overall enjoyable.

[Lukasz Lukomski · Rating 2 out of 5]

It's a book with a very promising title, offering a lot of potential. It is on a heavier side but delivers much less than one would guess from its size. I don't know if it's the flowery writing style or personal experiences dotted throughout, but there's much less than I expected. This book ranges wildly from interesting, to disappointing, to right on infuriating, when describing places and objects without actually naming them(!). The focus on the south of England (OK, it is the closest to the mainland, but still) is relentless, the lack of any map in a book written by a cartographer is baffling, British (English?) exceptionalism is unwavering.
(EDIT)
I forgot to add a shocking level error. Aberdeen gets plonked on the west coast of Scotland. I guess it's more of an editing issue than a cartographer (!) making a mistake, but still - a book that took years to prepare and write resulted in a whimpering borefest.

[Ray · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nicholas has a fairly elaborate writing style and spends a lot of time talking about places and features before telling us what they are. I found that irritating. The chapters on Roman and Britain up to the mid 1600s were frustrating; he continually uses Roman names and early British names for towns and cities which I found difficult to follow and at times I could not remember where he was talking about. In later chapters the style changes again. Nicholas writes a couple of paragraph and then includes quoted material from a different author. I can understand why this would be done, but I found it distracting.

However, having said lots of negative things about the books, it covers Great Britain from 11,000 BCE through to 2016 and provides lots of useful background. I’m glad I read it, but it wasn’t really what I was expecting.

[Steve Chilton · Rating 2 out of 5]

There were many times when I didn't know where he was talking about, as lack of locations makes reading this book intensely difficult. You often had to guess the place. The writing style is quite awkward which then led me to become increasingly critical about the narrative. It is also very unbalanced - a large part is devoted to prehistoric Britain, whilst the last 400 years are treated with an increasingly small amount of space, as if he was in a hurry to finish.

[Snicketts · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is very accessible even though the topics it touches on are wide-ranging and complex. Crane writes like the geography or history teacher who would always go off on a tangent when something grabbed his fancy, and the off-topic stuff was always much more interesting than the actual curriculum. The good bit is that there is no curriculum here - it's all the good bits.

From the ice ages to the seventies, this book must have been a labour of love - the bibliography alone goes on for pages and pages! Crane has a way of getting more information into a sentence than you really need, but each expansion is a gem. Touching on geographical features, place name origins, archaeology, anthropology, architecture and history, this is an amazing recount of how Britain has come to be the way it is; the good, the bad and the ugly - and who knew the history of the roads post-Romans was so interesting? It talks about the challenges, topographcal and population, which have forged the country I live in. His steady style walks you through thousands of years of development without it ever feeling like a period or a development has been missed.

I have re-found my fondness for this country through this book. It's not a quick read by any means, but it is thorough and entertaining, so it's fine to take your time.

[Daniel B-G · Rating 2 out of 5]

In the end, I had to call time on this. I read this in two bursts, the first tailed off as I really struggled to make progress, which I ascribed to time of the year and mood, the second attempt was much shorter, as I realised that the issues I'd had before weren't an artefact of circumstance but an unbridgeable gulf between us.

The central issue, it's directionless. Beyond the natural course of time's arrow, there isn't really any structure that I can tell, though it keeps hinting that it would like to have one. Lots of potentially interesting information is included, though more often than not it's just data, meaningless static that tells no story. Sentences are structured as if there is going to be something revealed, some conclusion reached only for it to fizzle. There are hints every so often of a larger thesis that is being built towards, but it is included in such an oblique way to be of little use. There were several bits that proved quite interesting, saving it from a complete trashing, but not enough to make we to slog through the remaining 300 pages.

[Grim-Anal King · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have no idea of the accuracy of this account. Presumably this is an area where no description could be comprehensive, so inevitably it comes down to the author's choice of hobby horses. Again I have no clue how representative Crane's choice is. The writing is pretty engaging (anyone who can make BC (or whatever they call it these days) vaguely interesting in any medium is doing very well), so although progress was slow it didn't feel like a desperate slog (in contrast to life in the British landscape in....).

I could have done with a little more signposting as we bounced around the country and between decades and the book would have benefited from some maps. These would have lubricated a lengthy journey, but I made it to the destination which is where I've always been aside from that spell living abroad.

[John Manley · Rating 5 out of 5]

"to care about a place, you mus first know its story"

A great read that gives uses the changes in the British landscape as a view into the forces behind the events of history. Nicholas Crane's narrative on the British landscape forms a perfect framework on which to base many a more detailed read of more specialist books. It inspired me to go delving into the OS on line maps to explore the sites he described- here are some of the pins that fascinated me, (based on the WWII chapter).

Dean Hill Royal Naval Armaments depot:
https://osmaps.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/5...

Royal Navy Propellant factory
https://osmaps.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/5...


https://navsbooks.wordpress.com/

[Roger Woods · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a large volume in which Nicholas Crane presents a wide sweep of the geographical history of Britain from the ice age to the present day. He is particularly good on the early settlement of Britain giving an insight into how our earliest ancestors came to make their lives in this "sceptered isle" (except it wasn't an island then!). This explains why the earliest Britains settled in areas which today we would regard as either inhabitable or certainly very difficult to live in. The climate changes over the centuries run like a thread through the narrative and the author also selects many examples in the different eras of history. I was surprised he does not mention the National Trust although he does refer to the National Parks.

[Lord Zion · Rating 5 out of 5]

My copy of this came with a major printing error 290 pages in: a section from an entirely different book appeared, removing the same number of pages from Nicholas' book! Thankfully, the replacement is OK so I can resume reading without the confusion of trying to work out why a witch called Zelda suddenly appeared.

I started another book whilst waiting for the replacement but, unless this book takes a drastic u-turn in the last 100 pages or so, I see no reason why I cannot rate it as 5 star right now. Fascinating read.

[Andrew McClarnon · Rating 4 out of 5]

This has been one of those books that keep on prompting a look at the map. Its been a fascinating journey, in skilled hands that have found a balance between the scholarly, and a sense of the story. I particularly enjoyed the way the author occasionally stepped into the story, for example when we visited the 'Claudian invasion ditches' with him at Richborough Castle. The long eons of pre - history where way marked, and somehow the Romans seem to have become recent ancestors. This one will sit on the shelf handy for frequent reference.

[AJ · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Making of the British Landscape by Nicholas Crane is a fantastic book charting our landscape as document across millennia. Clearly extremely knowledgeable about geography, geology, archaeology and history Crane wears his intellect lightly whilst being a vivid and poetic storyteller with an evident love for this country. This is big historical geography that at times grips like a thriller, at others an epic ode beating out the cadence of ancient rhythms. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

[Lucas Bertholdi-Saad · Rating 3 out of 5]

Another struggle to rate as I found the first third (until the arrival of the Romans) to be a great slog - Crane is perhaps better at writing history than archaeology, and has an infuriating habit of not naming important sites as a gesture to the romance of the prehistoric landscape. Yet the latter parts are more engaging and offer a fair trot. The book never really seems to find a purpose in my view however, and appears more a succession of extended vignettes.

[Johanne · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very good overview of the influences on landscape. Early sections on the impact of (natural) climate fluctuations were sobering. Occasional excursions into the city bad rural good world view but frankly not as many as other proponents of humans were better before industrial development type world views.

[Paula C · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is an amazing book, so comprehensively researched and chock-full of fascinating information. The low rating is purely due to the lack of detailed maps and the assumption that all readers would know the locations of the thousands of place-references. I'm familiar with many places in the UK but I don't live there and I found this a constant source of utter frustration as I was reading.

[David Mundy · Rating 2 out of 5]

I abandoned this because I found his style difficult to read, too many obscure unexplained terms, crucial lack of maps (as other reviewers point out), and somehow making things more complex than necessary. He is obviously enthusiastic and knowledgeable about the subject, so I regret having to give it up, and it probably deserves a higher rating but I've marked it down for exasperating me.

[Carlton · Rating 4 out of 5]

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.

[JoJo · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'll start by saying that I love books about the landscape, geology, geography and walking, but with this book I found it hard to get involved and felt confused about its purpose. I started it a few years ago and stopped when I couldn't get enthused thinking maybe I wasn't in the mood, but going back I found no change in my feelings. One to pass on to others who will hopefully enjoy it.

[Nat · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fascinating account of the geography of Britain that took me a while to get into but after the first few chapters I was captivated - plus I learnt a few new tidbits of information so that’s always good!