Map of a Nation: A Biography of the Ordnance Survey [Hardcover]

`Hewitt tackles the subject exuberantly ... The sweep of its history has true grandeur' --The Times

`An endlessly absorbing, lively and informative narrative that highlights the Ordnance project's legion of draughtsmen, surveyors, dreamers and eccentrics' --Observer

`An extremely handsome and scholarly account of the genesis of the OS map' --Sunday Telegraph

`A diligent and very detailed book. She has done justice to a neglected subject and to neglected but worthy men' --Daily Mail

`A remarkable story of human endeavour in the name of Enlightenment values'
--Metro

"Map of a Nation" tells the story of the creation of the Ordnance Survey map - the first complete, accurate, affordable map of the British Isles. The OS is a much beloved British institution, and "Map of a Nation" is, amazingly, the first popular history to tell the story of the map and the men who dreamt and delivered it from its inception in 1791, right through to the OS MasterMap of the present day: a vast digital database. The Ordnance Survey's history is one of political revolutions, rebellions, and regional unions that altered the shape and identity of the United Kingdom over the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It's also a deliciously readable account of one of the great untold British adventure stories, featuring intrepid individuals lugging brass theodolites up mountains to make the country visible to itself for the first time.

Rachel Hewitt competed her doctoral thesis on the subject at the university of London in 2008, and is currently a Research Fellow at Queen Mary and Westfield.