Steve Byrne here provides a critique of the principles of the countryside policy in England and Wales, which is based on our collective concern for a relationship with the common land. He contends that these principles are undermined by the hegemony of private landowners.

This book, published in 1877, sets out Hill's views on helping poor city dwellers improve their quality of life.

The first authoritative survey of the history of common land in Great Britain from the medieval period to present day.

In the 1960s Geoffrey Grigson travelled around England writing the story of the secret landscape that is all around us, if only we take the time to look and see. The result is a book that will take you on an imaginative journey, revealing hidden stories, unexpected places and strange phenomena. From green men, ice-scratches, cross-legged knights and weathercocks to rainbows, clouds and stars; from place-names and poets to mazes, dene-holes and sham ruins, via avenues, dewponds and village greens, The Shell Country Alphabet will help you discover the world that remains, just off the motorway. 'Geoffrey Grigson resurrected the minor, the provincial and the parochial ... [he was] an erudite and unrivalled topographer ... ardent in promoting informed awareness of the distinctiveness of place' Toby Barnard 'An anthologist of genius' P.J. Kavanagh

First published in 1966. The main object of the present work is to trace the process whereby the land of this country came into agricultural use under full individual control. That movement, as will be seen, is treated as continuous and as due in the main to the operation of large economic and, so to say, normal causes. While the rapidity and extent of inclosure varies from time to time, and while its kind undergoes certain changes, progress continues.

Introduced under the Countryside and Rights of Way Act 2000, the new right of access (commonly known as the 'right to roam') was phased in between September 2004 and October 2005, giving walkers the right to walk on large areas of the English countryside without having to keep to specified paths. 865,000 hectares of land (around 6.5 per cent of all land in England) is in practice open to the public and of this, 733,000 hectares is land to which no right of access previously existed. The NAO report finds that the right to roam was successfully introduced by the Countryside Agency in conjunction with Defra two months ahead of target, with easy access to over 90 per cent of the sites tested. There were initial problems with the countryside access website established to provide public information about the scheme, relating to the quality of online maps of access land and to the search function, but these had begun to improve by April 2006. The cost of implementing the open access programme was almost double the original estimate, largely due to a failure to pilot test the implementation of the scheme and a lack of adequate project management. In total, the cost of implementation is estimated to be £69 million and ongoing running costs are expected to be around £13 million in 2006-07. Although the benefits of the scheme cannot be easily quantified in financial terms, the NAO's initial assessment of the new right of access finds that it passed the key test of whether walkers can use it. Recommendations made include that in order to improve public transport facilities to enable people on low incomes and from urban areas to have more opportunities to use their new right of access, the Agency should explore with local councils the cost-effectiveness of diverting weekend bus services past open access land.