The Making of the British Landscape: How We Have Transformed the Land, from Prehistory to Today - Hardcover

Pryor is that rare combination of a first-rate working archaeologist and a good writer, with the priceless ability of being able to explain complex ideas clearly. This is popular archaeology at its best. (Times Higher Educational Supplement)

The British landscape is as rich a source of inspiration as ever and this book makes an excellent companion guide. (Margaret Drabble Telegraph)

Generously informative and challenging...compelling (Jonathan Keates Sunday Telegraph)

Pryor feels the land rather than simply knowing it. (Kathryn Hughes Guardian)

This is the changing story of Britain as it has been preserved in our fields, roads, buildings, towns and villages, mountains, forests and islands. From our suburban streets that still trace out the boundaries of long vanished farms to the Norfolk Broads, formed when medieval peat pits flooded, from the ceremonial landscapes of Stonehenge to the spread of the railways - evidence of how man's effect on Britain is everywhere. In The Making of the British Landscape, eminent historian, archaeologist and farmer, Francis Pryor explains how to read these clues to understand the fascinating history of our land and of how people have lived on it throughout time. Covering both the urban and rural and packed with pictures, maps and drawings showing everything from how we can still pick out Bronze Age fields on Bodmin Moor to how the Industrial Revolution really changed our landscape, this book makes us look afresh at our surroundings and really see them for the first time.