Fraser Harrison argued in a compelling book, Strange Land (1982), that we are all strangers now in the strange land of the countryside.
Even the indigeni feel like tourists or outsiders, he says: ‘The landscape is rapidly becoming unknown as the agricultural areas are stripped of all the features which made the classic English countryside so distinctive and precious.’
There has been some restoration of hedges and tree-planting since 1982, but I have never felt particularly at home in my terraced cottage at the
