Lifescapes: The Experience of Landscape in Britain, 1870-1960

Lifescapes, by Jeremy Burchardt, explores how personal experiences shape our responses to landscape in modern Britain, revealing four major patterns: Adherers, Withdrawers, Restorers, and Explorers. It argues that family structures and relationships play a more significant role in landscape encounters than cultural patterns, reflecting our innermost selves and the psychosocial influences shaping our development.

Format: Hardback
Length: 518 pages
Publication date: 31 March 2023
Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Why does landscape matter to us? We rarely articulate the often highly individual ways it can do so. Drawing on eight remarkable unpublished diaries, Jeremy Burchardt demonstrates that responses to landscape in modern Britain were powerfully affected by personal circumstances, especially those experienced in childhood and youth. Four major patterns are identified:

Adherers valued landscape for its continuity, Withdrawers for the refuge it provides from perceived threats, Restorers for its sustaining of core value systems, and Explorers for its opportunities for self-discovery and development.

Lifescapes sets out a new approach to landscape history based on comparative biography and deep contextualization, which has far-reaching implications. It foregrounds family structures and relationships and the psychological dynamics they generate. These, it is argued, were usually a more decisive presence in landscape encounters than wider cultural patterns and forces. Seen in this way, landscape can be understood as a mirror reflecting our innermost selves and the psychosocial influences shaping our development. This is a compelling and original study of the relationship between individual lives and landscapes.

ISBN-13: 9781009199872