Image by Alan Parkinson: Castle Acre Castle, NorfolkAn excellent article in the Times magazine a couple of weeks ago which I have just got round to blogging...
It features Bill Bryson interviewing David Cameron, Nick Clegg and Gordon Brown about their policies on the countryside in advance of the General Election...
I used a Bill Bryson quote at the start of my book "Look at it this Way" from the speech that he gave when he took over as President of the Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE) in June 2007
I used a Bill Bryson quote at the start of my book "Look at it this Way" from the speech that he gave when he took over as President of the Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE) in June 2007
The Times article begins with this excellent paragraph which would make an excellent discussion piece, or perhaps the script for a video / presentation to be put together by students, along with appropriate images....
Nothing – and I mean, really, absolutely nothing – is more extraordinary in Britain than the beauty of the countryside. Nowhere in the world is there a landscape that has been more intensively utilised – more mined, farmed, quarried, covered with cities and clanging factories, threaded with motorways and railway lines – and yet remains so comprehensively and reliably lovely over most of its extent. Wherever you are now, you are almost certainly no more than an hour away, if that, from the heady smell of dung and hay, and the glory of a landscape that is sumptuous, productive and divine. You are the luckiest people in the world to have that. Luck, alas, won’t be enough to keep it.
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Take a look at the article and you'll find plenty of other inspiration for work which looks at landscape change and the management of the countryside.
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