THE ENGLISH LANDSCAPE

Press, Volume XCIII, Issue 27896, 18 February 1956, Page 5

THE ENGLISH LANDSCAPE

[Reviewed by W.P.P.] The Making of the English Landscape. By W. A. Hoskins. Hodder and Stoughton. 240 pp. Lancashire: An Illustrated Essay on the History of the- Landscape. By Roy Millward. Hodder and Stoughton. 128 pp. “Despite the multitude of books about English landscape and scenery and the flood of topographical books in general, there is not one book which deals with the historical evolution of the landscape as we know it,” claims Dr. Hoskins in his introduction. He goes on to state that “at the most we may be told that the English landscape is the man-made creation of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries which is not even a quarter truth, for it applies only to country houses and their parks, and to the parliamentary enclosures that gave us a good deal of our modern pattern of fields, hedges, and by-roads. It ignores the fact that more than half of England never underwent this kind of enclosure, but evolved in an entirely different way, and that in some regions the landscape had been virtually completed by the eve of the Black Death.” The vital feature of Dr. Hoskins’s book in particular and the gen-

eral series of which he is editor is that he has broken entirely new ground in what one might call the guide book topography class. The magnificently urbane but subtly varied countryside and townscape, which is so much the charm of Western Europe, and especially England, to the New World visitor has both diverse origins and regional character. Something like 3000 years of human occupation, never constant in place or time, is underneath the landscape. “God made the country, and man made the town” is absurd poetical whimsy to New Zealanders, indeed to the whole New World. We are too recently aware of the work which we, and our parents and grandparents have been forced to undertake in order to produce the smiling acres of grassland, or the checker board patterned plains. It is even more fantasy when applied to the rural and urban landscapes which William Cowper was describing. Dr. Hoskins divides the making of the landscape into a number of distinct phases, and a chronological treatment brings out what logic there is behind the regionally changing face of England. Ultimately the geographers will complete with maps the picture he so firmly sketches and the areal extent of the various landscape forces will then be known. Such scholarly unravelling, for example is the basis of Professor Darby’s geographical analysis of the Domesday record. Eight great periods are described in the development of the English scene—Roman and pre-Roman, the “English” settlement, the colonisation of Medieval England, the Black Death and after, Tudor to Georgian England, Parliamentary Enclosures and the landscape, the Industrial Revolution and the landscape, and finally the landscape today. It is the present that Dr. Hoskins keeps before us, a present visible landscape which is the result of so many different features in the past. We are shown into the secrets of the scene. In two chapters of especial interest, the chronological treatment is put aside for the topical. “Roads, Canals and Railways” give us a fascinating insight into the endurance of the past into the present, and the “Landscape of Towns” guides one to the patterns which lie behind the apparent irrelevance of individual buildings. The greatest value and charm of Dr. Hoskins’s work is that in making his explanatory history, he has immeasurably deepened our appreciation of the descriptive landscape. Apposite and beautiful illustrations and clear maps crowd its pages. The scholar has written for the intelligent layman, yet no historian or geographer, since this work is right at the meeting place of those two disciplines, can or will ignore it. Especially at this distance from the scene, it gives understanding and depth, neither of which can come out of the lush burblings of presentd

day topographies. In the first of the country studies which are to expand regionally Dr. Hoskins’s work, Mr Millward has faithfully and skilfully carried out the general aims of his editor. “The observables of Lancashire and the secret history that lies behind them” are revealed. Largely a gift of the Victorian age. Lancashire is yet shown to be much more than the overurbanised landscape of the Industrial Revolution, dominated by towns montrously alike with “drab streets, towering mills, and soot-stained chapels.” Good use is made of maps and photographs to sort out the differences smothered by smoke, and to put time and understanding into the scene. However, Mr Millward is willing to enter the mire of the industrial age, and sort out something of the distinctiveness within the superficially repetitive townscapes. As well, of course, he takes us back to the real beginnings of the Lancashire scene—to the Anglo Saxons and to their Norse successors. The distinctive hands of each are still visible today. The New Zealand visitor to Britain, in fact or through literature, is all too frequently overwhelmed by the magnificent beauty and squalor which is the total English landscape. Now he can obtain real guidance to understanding.

The Dragon and the Rose. By David Scott Daniell. Jonathan Cape 217 pp. Children who have enjoyed the well written books about Oliver and his friend Polly, will welcome this new historical novel by David Scott Daniell. The story is set in medieval Florence this time, and it is a colourful and exciting tale of flight from danger by a quartet of most likeable people. They are very necessarily assisted at crucial moments by a character similar to and quite as satisfactory as John Buchan’s Mr Midwinter. The illustrations are the only disappointing part of the book, as they are executed in a curiously infantile manner for readers who are almost certainly beginning to develop a little sophistication.

THE SHERRY TRADE

Sherry. By Rupert Croft-Cooke. Putnam. 221 pp. Sherry is derived from Xres or Jerez de la Frontera in Spain and is the name given to the better kind of white wines that are produced there. These wines have no complications of vintage for they are blended, nor are vineyards particularly important, it is only a matter of finding a brand to suit the taste. Broadly, sherrys are divided into Finos and Olorosos. The Fino is pale and dry, the Oloroso dark with more body and sweeter. Between these extremes there centres a controversy of classification based on sight, smell and taste which may well keep the experts looking, smelling and tasting as long as sherry is produced. The sherry trade reached its peak in supplying the English market in the nineteenth century. At that time it was fashionable to offer a caller a biscuit and a glass of sherry. This custom received such sanction that the wine trade, in particular the importation of sherry, became the first trade to which a gentleman could devote himself without losing caste. Two kinds of importers developed in England. There were the wine importers and there were those who produced the wine in Jerez and sold it through their own trading houses in England. One such concern, Gonzales Byass and Company is dealt with in detail in this book. This interesting history of the sherry trade ends with some observations on bO^ tl \i_ African and Australian sherry a " d i - n - the s e are some words of thanksgiving for sherry in general.

AS THEY WERE

Strange Island. Britain Throueb Foreign Eyes. Compiled and edited by Francesca M. Wilson. Lon--mans. 288 pp. f S a collection of impressions which foreigners have formed of BriK a nn d lts lnhabi tants during the last 500 years. Selected observers Frenchman, Froissart, Vi ’ ?° another Frenchman, Pierre Maillaud, in 1940. The intervening period is fitted in with passages from the writings of visitors possessing without exception, perception and insight—though of course at this time many judgments are seen to err. The observations amount in fact to a social history of a long period in Britain’s history. The anthologist has adroitly chosen pieces that are both revealing and interesting. And she has an unerring eye for well-written pieces m which opinions and observations are set out clearly. The book is divided into six periods, each with an introduction providing perspective of the Britain (changing through the centuries) seen by the chosen visitors. There is a bibliography, with biographical notes, which will be invaluable to persons whose interest particular passages stimulate to further inquiry. A book of this type is naturally replete with richly quotable passages. But in a brief review it is better to refrain from quoting a few paragraphs which could leave false impressions about the scope of an anthology which ranges over a very wide variety of subjects. It must be left to readers to quote to family and friends passages they particularly

enjoy—and they will be many. It merely remains to say that from extensive reading and research Francesca Wilson has constructed a book which is at once social history in attractive form, and delightful entertainment.