From the Scots pine windbreaks of the Brecklands to the ancient earth and stone banks of the West Country, hedges are an essential component of regional landscape character. A working knowledge of them is an essential part of every landscape historian's toolkit. This book brings our understanding of their history up to date.

Drawing upon a unique computerised analysis of hedges in Norfolk, the authors explore how hedges came into existence, and how they have changed over time. They move beyond the myth that a hedge can be dated simply by counting species, and develop instead a much more...

Ancient Trees in the Landscape is an in-depth look at the history of the trees in Norfolk. It is largely - although not exclusively - about the larger, older specimens, and about those which have been managed in the past in "traditional" ways. Yet although it deals in detail with only one, relatively restricted, area of the country, the work presented here has a wider relevance. While each region of Britain has its own, distinctive arboricultural history, the approaches and methodology adopted in this book can be applied elsewhere and some of the general conclusions may well hold true...

Have probes of extraterrestrial origin conducted surveillance missions in Earth's atmosphere? James McDonald, co-founder of the Institute of Atmospheric Physics at the University of Arizona, one of the twentieth century's leading atmospheric physicists, presented strong evidence for this hypothesis at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in December 1969. Yet, remarkably, McDonald's important conjecture has all but disappeared from the purview of scientists today. That's likely to soon change, former Science Museum (London) curator Tom Willamson argues...