In his poem “Going, Going”, Philip Larkin expressed the fear that one day our green and pleasant land would be laid waste by “concrete and tyres”. Tim Dee seeks to assuage such fears. In the introduction to this collection of specially commissioned work by 31 poets, naturalists, novelists, historians and anthropologists, he writes: “The paved world can be as articulate as the vegetated.” In our urbanised world, filled with soul-destroying non-places, the need to connect to a locale remains undimmed: “Place-making is a signal of our species.” The slow accretion of experiences turns the most banal way-stations of our lives into sites of deep personal significance. As he says, “anywhere can be a somewhere”.
This is eloquently expressed in Philip Hoare’s essay on his love for the scruffy, suburban coastline of Southampton Water, where he grew up and where he now lives: “This grubby, desolate, lovely shore, overlooked by a petrochemical refinery, by container ships and the rumbling of the docks, has become my common ground. It is everything and nothing.”
Inspired by the work of the charity Common Ground, which was founded in 1983 with the aim of celebrating the diverse and imaginative ways people engage with their environments, these rich and varied essays bring together voices from diverse backgrounds and geographies. Mark Cocker braves gale-force winds and driving rain to visit Upper Teesdale, County Durham, in search of spring gentians, “strange, furled tongues of ocean blue bulbed out of the Earth from who knows what depths”. Ken Worpole celebrates Clissold Park, Hackney, as “a rare place of enchantment open to all” and warns that the common land rights urban parks embody are threatened in our age of austerity and free-market economics. Helen Macdonald revisits the landscape of her childhood near Camberley, Surrey, and is reduced to tears on discovering a nine-acre wildflower meadow she had loved has morphed into a neatly mown grass monoculture, like a playing field: “part of me disappeared too”. There are also fine contributions by Richard Holmes, Marina Warner, Richard Mabey and others.
Combining scholarship, history and observation, this is a memorable exploration of place that celebrates the particular geographies we forge in both natural and human-made landscapes.
• Ground Work: Writings on Places and People is published by Jonathan Cape. To order a copy for £12.99 (RRP £16.99) go to guardianbookshop.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over £10, online orders only. Phone orders min p&p of £1.99.
