Agricultural History Review, Volume 51 Part 2 (2003), p. 235

In this well-written volume, Jeremy Burchardt has set out to write a history of the countryside but without agriculture taking centre stage. Instead, it is the cultural 236 the agricultural appraisal of the English (primarily English in this volume rather than British) of their countrysides which is given precedence. As such, he sets himself a difficult task, since arguably one cannot divorce agriculture prior to the latter half of the twentieth century from its social and cultural milieux. To do otherwise is to risk an analysis of cultural production without an understanding of its fundamental context: the (literal) grass roots of rural life.

This is an overview book. As such its primary aim is largely to synthesize and organize previously published material, and in this it certainly succeeds. The writing is admirably balanced and has been helped by good production standards from I.B. Tauris. Chapter 1 provides an excellent introduction to the rest of the book, setting out the broad outlines of industrialization and urbanization in Britain at a macro level, and this is followed by chapters which outline the archaic and classical formulations of the ‘Golden Age’ (very dependent on Raymond Williams here) and the development of a yardstick by which the quality of rural lives and environments was used to judge the quality of that socio-economic progress which dominated nineteenth- and twentieth-century urban/industrial environments. Having set out the broad parameters, Burchardt then proceeds to both demystify the rural idyll by narrating the outlines of rural radicalism in the nineteenth century (Chapter 3) and to illustrate the ‘greening of the city’ in the later Victorian period (Chapter 4), thereby bringing the supposed restorative (aesthetic and social morality) properties of the countryside into the burgeoning cities. This coalescence of town and country is then taken a stage further by a consideration of model villages and garden cities (Chapter 5). The chronological structure of the book is also developed by a consideration of literary attitudes to the rural in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (Chapter 6) and also by an informative account of land reform movements from 1850 (Chapter 7) and suburban growth (Chapter 8).

The later part of the book departs to some extent from a broad chronological sequencing to examine certain themes. The economic consequences of rural nostalgia (Chapter 9), and rambling (Chapter 10) are examples. However chronology is again established with the twentieth-century organic movement (Chapter 11), interwar rural reconstruction (Chapter 12), rural change and the legislative framework from 1939 (Chapter 13), agriculture and the environment which only deals with the last 50 years (Chapter 14), recreation in the countryside (Chapter 15) and the relationship between attitudinal conflict and social change in the countryside (Chapter 16). The final chapter provides an excellent summary and very balanced judgement of the interrelationship between rural attitudes history review and political power in Britain, and is especially good on the analysis of the current Countryside Alliance.

The number of chapters purposely detailed above – 18 including the introduction – and spread across just 208 pages, indicates to the reader that few of the multiple elements involved with this subject can be explored in depth. Indeed, for the academic with background in rural history there will inevitably be a sense of frustration because there is simply insufficient space to develop any of the themes. The movement between chronological narrative and thematic treatment can also lead to an element of repetition, although this is kept to a minimum. I would take issue with a few of the matters dealt with: the treatment of counterurbanization in Chapter 14 is cursory and underplays the extent to which it is not just people moving out from towns into the countryside, but jobs also. In Chapter 16 there are rather too many hints that Burchardt sees the village as the only real rural settlement feature (neglecting the hamlet and scattered settlement patterns of much of the country) and that rural society is dominated by the old tripartite (squire, farmer, farmworker) structure. These are two myths which really also require firm demolition. Finally, does the author succeed in providing sufficient analytical separation between agriculture and his cultural investigation of the countryside, as claimed at the outset? The answer is no. Time and again he simply has to set out the broad perspective or inherent detail of British agriculture; indeed, in some of the later chapters he loses sight of his ambition, and deals very firmly with farming issues – and in this reviewer’s opinion, rightly so, since the ‘other country’ can exist as an imagined idyll only in relation to its historical reality.

All that is, however, to detract from the main strength of the book, which is its synthesis and text book qualities, and I shall be pleased to recommend this as an undergraduate text, and the end-notes and bibliography are helpful for further reading, being generally clear and with very few errors. The price is reasonable, although a soft back version would be helpful for student requirements.