Britain's landscape, the product both of natural geological processes and some 10,000 years of human habitation, has a uniquely rich historical diversity. In The Landscape of Britain, Michael Reed explains the forces at work in the evolution of the landscape, pointing out examples of surviving evidence from the past.

The landscape of late twentieth-century Britain is the end product of human effort directed not only towards satisfying basic physical needs for food and shelter, but also towards expressing profound spiritual and intellectual aspirations, whether by means of burial mounds or churches, schools or monasteries. This volume examines the endless processes of accretion which have created the urban and rural landscapes as today's inhabitants have inherited them, showing how each generation makes its own individual contribution without being able entirely to erase those of its predecessors, however remote or distant in time.