David Matless

England is known as a ‘green and pleasant’ land, but what does this mean? England’s Green explores how the country’s connection with the environment has shaped and reflected English national identity since the 1960s, when pollution, pesticides, industrial farming and upset ecologies were presented as signs of a world gone wrong. This book examines English cultures of nature, land, farming and other ways in which humans engage with the natural world; or with a world whose naturalness seems increasingly pressured and in question. From agriculture to nature, leisure, climate change, the folkloric, the archaeological and the mystical, David Matless uncovers the genealogies of today’s debates over land and culture, showing how twenty-first-century concerns and anxieties have been moulded by events over the past sixty years. From government policy to popular music, and from ecological polemic to television comedy, England’s Green shows the richness and complexity of English environmental culture.

‘England’ and ‘Englishness’ have received much attention in the twenty-first century, not least in debates over Brexit. About England explores how these concepts have been imagined since the 1960s, covering themes including politics, popular culture, geography, art, architecture, film and music. David Matless navigates the country’s complex cultural terrain, revealing the ways in which the national is entangled with the local, the regional, the European, the international, the imperial, the post-imperial and the global. He also addresses physical landscapes, from the village and country house to the urban, suburban and industrial, and reflects on the ‘English modern’. About England uncovers the genealogy of recent cultural and political debates in England, showing how twenty-first-century concerns and anxieties have been moulded by events over the previous sixty years.

Landscape has been central to de?nitions of Englishness for centuries. David Matless argues that 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. Landscape and Englishness is extensively illustrated and draws on a wide range of material – topographical guides, health manuals, paintings, poetry, architectural polemic, photography, nature guides and novels. This edition contains a new preface by the author.

In the Nature of Landscape presents regional cultural landscape as a new direction for research in cultural geography. Represents the first cultural geographic study of the Norfolk Broads region of eastern EnglandAddresses regional cultural landscape through consideration of narratives of landscape origin, debates over human conduct, the animal and plant landscapes of the region, and visions of the ends of landscape through pollution and floodDraws upon in-depth original research, spanning almost two decades of archival work, interviews, and field studyCovers a great diversity of topics, from popular culture to scientific research, folk song to holiday diaries, planning survey to pioneering photography, and ornithology to children’s literatureFeatures a variety of illustrative material, including original photographs, paintings, photography, advertising imagery, scientific diagrams, maps, and souvenirs

In the Nature of Landscape presents regional cultural landscape as a new direction for research in cultural geography. Represents the first cultural geographic study of the Norfolk Broads region of eastern EnglandAddresses regional cultural landscape through consideration of narratives of landscape origin, debates over human conduct, the animal and plant landscapes of the region, and visions of the ends of landscape through pollution and floodDraws upon in-depth original research, spanning almost two decades of archival work, interviews, and field studyCovers a great diversity of topics, from popular culture to scientific research, folk song to holiday diaries, planning survey to pioneering photography, and ornithology to children’s literatureFeatures a variety of illustrative material, including original photographs, paintings, photography, advertising imagery, scientific diagrams, maps, and souvenirs

This book arises out of an ESRC project devoted to an examination of the economic, social and cultural impacts of the 'service class' on rural areas. The research was an attempt to document these impacts through close empirical work in a set of three rural communities, but something happened on the way. The authors found that the 'rural' became a real sticking point. Respondents used it in different ways - as a bludgeon, as a badge, as a barometer - to signify many different things - security, identity, community, domesticity, gender, sexuality, ethnicity - nearly always by drawing on many different sources - the media, the landscape, friends and kin, animals. It became abundantly clear that the 'rural', whatever chameleon form it took, was a prime and deeply felt determinant of the actions of many respondents. Yet it was also clear that to the authors they possessed no theoretical framework that could allow them to negotiate the 'rural' to deconstruct its diverse nature as a category. Rather each of the extended essays in the book is an attempt by each author to draw out one aspect of the 'rural' by drawing on different traditions in social and cultural theory.