Landscape and Englishness

TLDR

Landscape has been central to definitions of Englishness for centuries. The book argues that landscape is the site where English visions of past, present, and future intersect in debates over national identity, history, modernity, citizenship, and the body, and concludes by tracing its story to the present, linking post‑war debates to current environmental and national expressions. The book draws on extensive illustrations and a wide range of materials—including topographical guides, health manuals, paintings, poetry, architectural polemics, photography, nature guides, and novels—to explore these themes. The author shows that during the inter‑war period a vision of Englishness and landscape emerged as both modern and traditional, urban and rural, progressive and preservationist, shaped by debates over countryside building, city replanning, leisure, and citizenship, and that this legacy informs contemporary discussions of environmental care and national identity.

Abstract

Landscape has been central to definitions of Englishness for centuries. This book argues that, in fact, landscape has been the site where English visions of the past, present and future have met in debates over questions of national identity, disputes over history and modernity, and ideals of citizenship and the body. Extensively illustrated, the book draws on a wide range of materials, including topographical guides, health manuals, paintings, poetry, architectural polemic, photography, nature guides and novels. The author first examines the inter-war period, showing how a vision of Englishness and landscape as both modern and traditional, urban and rural, progressive and preservationist, took shape around debates over building in the countryside, the replanning of cities, and the cultures of leisure and citizenship. He concludes by tracing out the story of landscape and Englishness to the present day, showing how the familiar terms of debate regarding landscape and heritage are a product of the immediate post-war era, and asking how current arguments over care for the environment or expressions of the nation resonate with earlier histories and geographies.