Why does landscape matter to us? We rarely articulate the often highly individual ways it can do so. Drawing on eight remarkable unpublished diaries, Jeremy Burchardt demonstrates that responses to landscape in modern Britain were powerfully affected by personal circumstances, especially those experienced in childhood and youth. Four major patterns are identified: 'Adherers' valued landscape for its continuity, 'Withdrawers' for the refuge it provides from perceived threats, 'Restorers' for its sustaining of core value systems, and 'Explorers' for its opportunities for self-discovery and development. Lifescapes sets out a new approach to landscape history based on comparative biography and deep contextualization, which has far-reaching implications. It foregrounds family structures and relationships and the psychological dynamics they generate. These, it is argued, were usually a more decisive presence in landscape encounters than wider cultural patterns and forces. Seen in this way, landscape can be understood as a mirror reflecting our innermost selves and the psychosocial influences shaping our development. This is a compelling and original study of the relationship between individual lives and landscapes.
The enduring 'Town versus Country' debate lies at the root of modern British society. How far did the idealization of the countryside by artists and writers since the Industrial Revolution foster anti-urban, anti-industrial values? How have such values affected government policy, social structure and economic dynamism? Did post-war developments, in particular rural-urban commuting and environmentalist criticism of modern 'industrial' farming, undermine the traditional distinction between town and country, or are they themselves symptoms of the continuing allure of the rural idyll? This book will demonstrate the remarkable influence that attitudes to the countryside have had on the evolution of modern British life.
The living standards of the rural poor suffered a severe decline in the first half of the nineteenth century as a result of high population growth, changing agricultural practices, enclosure and the decline of rural industries. Allotment provision was the most important counterweight to the pressures. This book offers the first systematic analysis of the early nineteenth-century allotment movement, providing new data on the chronology of the movement and on the number, geographical distribution, size, rents, cultivation yields and effect on living standards of allotments, showing how the movement brought the culture of the rural labouring poor more closely into line with the mainstream values of respectable mid-Victorian England. This book casts new light on central aspects of early and mid-nineteenth-century social and economic history, agriculture and rural society. JEREMY BURCHARDT is lecturer in Rural History, University of Reading.
The living standards of the rural poor suffered a severe decline in the first half of the nineteenth century as a result of high population growth, changing agricultural practices, enclosure and the decline of rural industries. Allotment provision was the most important counterweight to the pressures. This book offers the first systematic analysis of the early nineteenth-century allotment movement, providing new data on the chronology of the movement and on the number, geographical distribution, size, rents, cultivation yields and effect on living standards of allotments, showing how the movement brought the culture of the rural labouring poor more closely into line with the mainstream values of respectable mid-Victorian England. This book casts new light on central aspects of early and mid-nineteenth-century social and economic history, agriculture and rural society. JEREMY BURCHARDT is lecturer in Rural History, University of Reading.
The enduring 'Town versus Country' debate lies at the root of modern British society. How far did the idealization of the countryside by artists and writers since the Industrial Revolution foster anti-urban, anti-industrial values? How have such values affected government policy, social structure and economic dynamism? Did post-war developments, in particular rural-urban commuting and environmentalist criticism of modern 'industrial' farming, undermine the traditional distinction between town and country, or are they themselves symptoms of the continuing allure of the rural idyll? This book will demonstrate the remarkable influence that attitudes to the countryside have had on the evolution of modern British life.
What do we want from economic growth? What sort of a society are we aiming for? In everyday economics, there is no such thing as enough, or too much, growth. Yet in the world’s most developed countries, growth has already brought unrivalled prosperity: we have ‘arrived’. More than that, through debt, inequality, climate change and fractured politics, the fruits of growth may rot before everyone has a chance to enjoy them. It’s high time to ask where progress is taking us, and are we nearly there yet? In fact, Trebeck and Williams claim in this ground-breaking book, the challenge is now to make ourselves at home with this wealth, to ensure, in the interests of equality, that everyone is included. They explore the possibility of ‘Arrival’, urging us to move from enlarging the economy to improving it, and the benefits this would bring for all.
This book reads T. S. Eliot’s poetry and plays in light of his sustained preoccupation with organicism. It demonstrates that Eliot’s environmental concerns emerged as a notable theme in his literary works from his early poetry notebook of poems known as Inventions of the March Hare at least until Murder in the Cathedral.
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