The Shell Country Alphabet

THE middle decades of the 20th cen-tury were a time of much curiosity about the appearance of Britain, its countryside and townscapes, its landforms and archaeology, as well as contrasts between the regions.

- Geoffrey Grigson

This interest, partly sparked by the growth of car ownership and transport improvements that, ironically, hastened the destruction of much of what was interesting about these things, was met by a rash of books by distinguished writers. Among the latter was Geoffrey Grigson (1905–85).

Primarily a poet, and the founder of the influential 1930s poetry periodical New Verse, which championed W. H. Auden and turned down John Betjeman, Grigson was also a sharp topographical observer. In The Shell Country Alphabet, he aimed to ‘illustrate or explain things we come across in the countryside, chiefly things due to our ancestors or the last five thousand years, the artificial objects and phenomena which caught their fancy and still appeal to ourselves—emphasising England’.

First published in 1966, when holidays abroad were beginning to challenge the popularity of the domestic break,