This text explains the processes at work in the evolution of the landscape, pointing out examples of surviving evidence from the past. The landscape of late 20th-century Britain is the end product of some 10,000 years of human effort directed not only towards satisfying basic physical needs for food and shelter, but also towards expressing profound spiritual and intellectual aspirations, whether by means of burial mounds or churches, schools or monasteries. Michael Reed shows how each generation makes its own individual contribution without being able entirely to erase those of its...