The Campaign for the Protection of Rural England is 100. Happy Birthday CPRE!
If CPRE were a person then its centenary would be marked by paeans of praise and with the knowledge that there was little time to add to the lifetime of achievement. But for an organisation this is just a significant milestone between past and future successes.
This volume doesn’t attempt a summary of the past which I regretted. CPRE is in my peripheral vision rather than centre stage and I would have liked a quick run-through of the notable events of CPRE’s first century. The book’s dustjacket suggests that there are bold and hopeful visions of a fairer more sustainable future in these pages and there are, indeed some.
I found Fiona Reynolds’s essay the most gripping in this regard. With her background as a former CEO of CPRE, and DG of National Trust, and a spell in the Cabinet Office she has the policy and practical background to think about future land use. Now I don’t fully agree with her analysis but that isn’t the point. It carried me along and made me think and those are good things.
I’ll not précis Dame Fiona’s essay because I recommend you read it yourself as well as many others here. I particularly enjoyed the essays by Tim Dee, Karen Lloyd, Richard Mabey, Rebecca Smith and Isabella Tree but you’ll find your own favourites, I’m sure.
To my mind, a strange style choice has been made as many (though not all) of the essays (and poems) have rather small, rather grainy, rather dark black-and-white photographs at their beginnings. These are often of the author (often in their youth) and just take you back in time, often by about four decades (judging from the hairstyles and clothes) and, it felt to me, away from those bold and hopeful visions.
The cover? I’d give it 7/10.
Future Rural: imagining tomorrow’s countryside (various authors) edited by Adrian Cooper is published by Little Toller.
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