IN CELEBRATION OF FOUR REMARKABLE WOMEN
BOOK THE WOMEN WHO SAVED THE ENGLISH COUNTRYSIDE
BY MATTHEW KELLY
YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS, £20 (HB)
This wonderful book tells the stories of Octavia Hill, Beatrix Potter, Pauline Dower and Sylvia Sayer, and the substantial part they played in defining what we today think of as ‘the English countryside’. With an engaging, accessible, page-turning style, Matthew Kelly reveals an innate awareness of his reader as he illuminates the achievements of these four extraordinary women.
Hill was “a public moralist and reformer of quite astonishing range and commitment” who facilitated the purchase of countless pockets of land in
