Crane, N. 2016. The Making of the British Landscape, from the Ice Age to the Present. W&N, Orion Books. 581pp.

I had to fact-check with The Making of The British Landscape by Nicholas Crane on the populations of large mammals that roamed these isles before man arrived. All fine and amazing. Crane is familiar with British TV audiences for his walks along the coast (there is a book on coasts along with his other six titles).  He takes a very forensic and mathematical look at all the dwellings he describes from the earliest times to the present. He can read the landscape better than anyone, and can describe the lumps and bumps and the travails that man has had in eeking out a living from the soil and rocks.  If you have watched countless archaeological programs on fascinating discoveries, this book knits them all together to make a good read. From early block houses, natural gathering places, enclosures, roundhouses, urban grids, the influence of the Romans in Britain and when they left are all covered. Crane blends all these together to make sense of them all, a sort of drone’s eye view of how they are all connected. From earliest times (when Britain was attached to the continent) he takes us up the Thames and westwards through the Cheddar gorge visiting all sorts of locations that make sense with the wandering Home sapiens forever chasing food and foraging. By the time William the Conqueror arrived in 1066 he says that there were 100 market towns in Britain ‘by the time the Normans showed up’  ‘By doomsday, maybe as little as 15 per cent  of the 27 million acres of land covered in the 1089 returns were wooded, rather less than the proportion of woodland seen today in France.’  The Forest of Dean was probably felled in the 12th century. I think that Crane cannot look at any earthwork or man-made structure without making a calculation of how many people were needed, and how many man-hours and days were needed to get the job done. For example he says of Windmill Hill around 62,000 worker-hours would have been involved labouring 10 hr a day, in groups of 50 people to make the mound. And this was continued for over 50 years involving generations of families and lots of food and timber. There were about 80 of the temenoi (sacred places) in Britain, and Glastonbury, Aintree and Wembley Stadium locations were built on these important sites. These were places that people gathered for all sorts of social engagements. At this period, by 3,000yrs ago man had felled more tree than raised walls and all the elms had gone he says. The book has a general reference list per chapter, plenty of photographs and an index. It is a comprehensive book much recommended.