The Plot: A Biography of an English Acre [Paperback]

Madeleine Bunting wanted to find out more about her late father, John Bunting, the sculptor and art teacher, what motivated and drove him. In doing so she decided to look at the plot of land that he bought at Scotch Corner and why he built a chapel on it.

What we are given is part biography and part history as she delves further into the land. This may not sound like everyones cup of tea - but what we are given here is something highly interesting and thought provoking. Not only does Bunting show what has happened on the plot of land itself over the millennia but also what has happened in the surrounding area. From drovers passing through and monks starting a community we also have the battle between Robert the Bruce and Edward II, which led to the latters ignominous escape. This area of land doesn't just show local history but some of the more broader aspects which have shaped the history of the British Isles. We are forced to think about what is real untamed wild land and what is really shaped by man, indeed so much that we take as the natural land has actually been made by us over the centuries. From this we also have to think about how we use the land and what impact our actions can have with any changes that become apparent climate change.

Farming has always been difficult in this part of North Yorkshire and with people willing to buy up farmhouses as weekend retreats and farmers trying to survive we are shown the problems of this area, also what effect has been made by tourism and those who shoot grouse. I must admit that I wasn't sure whether I would really like this book when I got it but after starting it I was fully immersed and absorbed, and was really glad that I ordered it. Admittedly this is never going to be a huge seller but if you like such tv programmes as 'Coast' and 'Countryfile', or just history you will probably enjoy this.

After the death of her father, Guardian columnist Madeleine Bunting set herself the task of getting to know him, the land he loved and the ideas that informed his life, by writing this book, The Plot. It is the story of a one-acre plot on the Yorkshire moors (Scotch Corner, but not, as I thought for the first few chapters, *the* Scotch Corner service station on the A1!), and the surrounding area. It's also the story of a difficult man, his family life, hopes and dreams; and it's the story of how his daughter comes to something of an understanding and acceptance of him.

John Bunting bought the Plot as an idealistic young man, rejecting his suburban origins and determined to carve out an alternative life on his own terms. On it, he built a Catholic war memorial chapel, and a habitable hut, while raising his family five miles down the road in a village cottage.

Madeleine Bunting intertwines her father's relationship to the Plot with wider themes relevant to its history - companionship, war and change. We zoom in on the details, and then zoom out again to contemplate the abstract. I'm always fascinated by details of everyday life in history, so I enjoyed reading about the drovers' roads which went from the Scottish Highlands down to London, and the old occupations and ways of life which went with them - I could picture the farmhouses lit up on a dark moorland night, the cattle secured outside as the drovers bought their ale and waited for the blacksmith to shoe some livestock, glowing sparks flying. More universally, for example, she discusses the idea of landscape and the increasing dominance of vision over the other senses.

The latter third of the book examines the social changes of the twentieth century. Growing suburbanisation, and a precarious countryside which is abandoned and then nostalgically objectified.

I give this book four stars. I enjoyed learning parts of history that were previously unfamilar to me, and the many themes covered and alluded to did give me food for thought. However, the tone sometimes felt like a Guardian feature essay, and the Plot of land itself remains intimidating and mysterious. I was also put off by the presentation of dodgy anecdotes as fact - we are told that William the Conqueror got lost in the moorland fog and wound himself up into a rage, and therefore to this day, almost a thousand years on, the villagers use the expression "he was cussing like Billy Norman". This strikes me as an implausible and twee explanation for the phrase (I could believe it had originated in more recent history as a companion piece to the story of the frustrated conqueror, but not that it has been said continuously since the eleventh century), and I wish it had been explicitly presented as a colourful but dubious explanation. It's a minor gripe, but I feel the credibility of the book was let down by it.

Throughout the turbulent twentieth century, the English countryside served idealists and romantics as a "theatre of dreams" - an idealised space where time had stood still, suburbia had been excluded and craftspeople continued to find personal fulfillment working with their hands in villages that had remained unchanged for centuries. Madeleine Bunting's father went further than most in imposing this vision on his family. The North Yorkshire plot of land he leased in 1958 and used to build a highly personal chapel, a showcase for his sculptures and a focus for his unspoken but fervent Catholicism, was a place that aroused conflicting emotions in his family, and after his death in 2002 Bunting realized that if she was ever to truly understand him she would have to understand the Plot and its many historical associations.

So this book is a memoir, the story of a parent who must have been very hard to live with, whose aspirations made an uncomfortable fit with the realities of family life and the conflicting demands on the rural landscape in postwar England. It's a kind of exorcism, deeply personal but made universal and political by Bunting's intelligence and the research and writing skills she has acquired through a successful career in journalism. It's not a linear narrative by any means; the way the focus shifts from family picnics to Cistercian monks, from moths to the woes of modern farmers, could collapse into chaos in less accomplished hands. But in the second section, "War", the picture comes into focus and she draws together the threads of personal and collective memory.

Her father first discovered the Plot on a highly significant date - 6th June, 1944. While his contemporaries just a few years older were facing German tanks in Europe, he was an Ampleforth schoolboy on his way to a school picnic. Starting from a powerful image of her father bent over a memorial statue he carved and gave pride of place to in his chapel, Bunting shows us clearly that survivor guilt was a large part of his motivation. He was left with a life he hadn't expected to be spared to live and the statue of a 1940s soldier he is looking at, with a haunting mixture of grief and pride, represents himself.

Divisions can be very blurred between the personal and the political. What we naively think of as a natural landscape as we admire a view is, in reality, shaped by hundreds of years of human toil. While Stanley Baldwin was making speeches about the eternal values of the English countryside, real farmers were struggling to survive the Depression. And the pretty cottages now occupied by wealthy "good-lifers" commuting to the cities were abandoned rural homes falling into decay in Bunting's childhood.

It's not a depressing book by any means, but it's a very honest one. The countryside has always been exploited - by cattle drivers, monks, hill farmers, grouse beaters, the Forestry Commission and, most recently, mass tourism. With her trademark thoroughness Bunting brings all these influences to life and shows that they had both positive and negative effects. She writes lyrically, but never sentimentally, of the beauty of the North York Moors, articulating both the overall view (literally in the last chapter when she experiences her childhood haunts from the vantage point of a glider) and the tiny but significant details. She has a gift for making the most unlikely subjects fascinating - I never expected to read about grouse shooting or the subculture of medieval cattle drivers with such enthusiasm. You could rush through this book but, like driving through a landscape that needs to be hiked through to be fully appreciated, that would be missing the point.

This is a great contrast to the numerous coffee-table books you can buy about the countryside. The illustrations and maps are modest but each carries a wealth of meanings. It's a meditation on the value of knowing a small place very well and appreciating the layers of historical and cultural associations that landscape carries in this crowded island. As the nature writer Garry Snyder once said, sometimes the most radical thing you can do is stay home.