Landscape and Englishness: Second Expanded Edition (Picturing History) - Softcover

Matless, David

Softcover

ISBN 10: 178023581X ISBN 13: 9781780235813

Publisher: Reaktion Books, 2016

Synopsis

As David Matless argues in this book—updated in this accessible, pocket edition—landscape has been central to definitions of Englishness for centuries. It is the aspect of English life where 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, Landscape and Englishness explores just how important the aesthetics of Britain’s cities and countryside have been to its people.

Matless examines a wide range of material, including topographical guides, health manuals, paintings, poetry, architectural polemics, photography, nature guides, and novels. Taking readers to the interwar period, he explores how England negotiated the modern and traditional, the urban and rural, the progressive and preservationist, in its decisions over how to develop the countryside, re-plan cities, and support various cultures of leisure and citizenship. Tracing the role of landscape to Englishness from then up until the present day, he shows how familiar notions of heritage in landscape are products of the immediate post-war era, and he unveils how the present always resonates with the past. 

About this title

About the Author:

David Matless is professor of cultural geography at the University of Nottingham. He is the editor ofThe Place of Music and author of Geographies of British Modernity. 

Review:

“Landscape and Englishness is an essential read for anyone interested in why some kinds of interaction with nature are celebrated and others are frowned on. Drawing on a huge diversity of sources—books, films, preservationist tracts, walking guides, novels, music-hall songs, Ministry of Information pamphlets, maps, and festival guides—Matless reveals how our assumptions about landscape and national identity were forged in the decades between the Great War and the 1950s, and how deeply they’ve been shaped by history, class and politics . . . a revelation.” (Helen Macdonald Guardian)

“Creates a convincing portrait of the changing meanings of the English landscape in the twentieth century. . . . This book is filled with enjoyable cameos of writers, painters, poets, and naturalists, but it is also a thoughtful portrayal of the city and the shifting ideology of modernity.” (Times Literary Supplement)

“Already after the first world war the spread of what the countryside alliance of those days saw as the ‘blight’ of suburbia evoked a cacophony of resentment. Matless, a geographer, has rummaged purposefully among the gargoyles.” (Economist)

“The best book so far on the interpretation of landscape in the middle years of the twentieth century.” (The Architect’s Journal, Books of the Year)

“This richly suggestive book draws on the kind of discarded material you might find gathering dust and fungus in a remote second-hand bookshop somewhere in ‘middle-England.’. . . this book offers rich pickings for art historians who will look at Paul Nash, Graham Sutherland, and even Richard Long and Hamish Fulton afresh.” (Art Newspaper)

“Cultural history at its best: subtle, multi-layered, and full of new ideas and insights. . . . This book is a ‘must.’” (Contemporary British History)

“Engrossing and important . . . Beneath the agitated and often opposing arguments about the proper treatment and use of the rural landscape are many and deep reverberations, touching issues of social, economic, aesthetic, and political sensitivity.” (Architectural Review)

“An interesting book, full of intriguing material, subtle arguments, illuminating insights. There is a wealth of illustrations and the book is very well produced . . . it is a work of real importance . . . it reads as much as a work of the heart as well as the mind.” (Geography)

“A richly informative text.” (Twentieth Century British History)

“As a wide-ranging and perceptive account of competing visions of England during a period of tremendous social change, out of which a distinctly new yet supposedly familiar landscape emerged, this book reminds us that landscape in itself and through its representations is a manifestation of culture, and that by studying it we are participants in its continuous and often contentious reevaluation. Landscape and Englishness deserves attention from anyone engaging with this issue.” (Agricultural History Review)

About this edition

• Publisher: Reaktion Books
• Publication date: 2016
• ISBN 10: 178023581X
• ISBN 13: 9781780235813
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 2
• Number of pages: 368