Spectacular Somerset

Geographer and Coast presenter Nicholas Crane talks to KAREN ANNE OVERTON about Roman hedonism, ancient Somerset burial grounds and his new book.

- Karen Anne Overton

LIKE any expert worth his salt, when Nicholas Crane talks about geographical history it has a rather stirring effect.

In his new book The Making of the British Landscape, the geographer, writer and presenter gave himself the daunting task of documenting the geo-history of our country from its days as a European peninsula of glacier and tundra to the magnificent mix of metropolis and countryside it is today. “It’s a book that matters dearly to me,” says the 62-year-old. “I’ve been working on it for about 80 years and thinking about it for about 20 or 30! It’s a bit of a life project and it’s very rewarding when readers pick up on it as a subject.”

As a geography undergraduate, Nicholas was required to know W. G. Hoskins’ The Making of the English Landscape ‘pretty much by heart’. Hoskins encouraged his readers to treat the English landscape as if it was an archive or a library – through studying and exploring it you could understand its past. Hesitant for many years to step on the toes of a man he so admired, Nicholas eventually came around to the idea that by adding Scotland and Wales, covering the period from the Ice Age up to the Anglo-Saxon period and continuing from where Hoskins left off in 1955, he would actually be continuing and strengthening his hero’s work.

Considering Somerset has some of the most spectacular topography in the UK, Nicholas hardly needs any encouragement to start listing his favourite bits of our glorious county.