The Making of the English Landscape

"The interesting thing about the book is that in effect it created an entirely new subject of landscape history. Hoskins and his colleague Maurice Beresford, as a result of walking in the English Midlands during the Second World War, realised that there was a whole story about the landscape that hadn’t really been told. He published the book in 1955. It examined the way in which the countryside had come to look as it does, starting from pre-historic times and going right up to the time of writing. Yes. Although subsequent scholars have disagreed with many of his arguments, his great contribution was to ask the original questions. The third edition is particularly interesting because it has an introduction and commentary by Christopher Taylor, who has been one of the leading later landscape historians. Taylor has inserted comments and criticisms at the points in the text where modern research differs from what Hoskins says, which means in effect you are getting two books for one."