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Map of a Nation: A Biography of the Ordnance Survey
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
4/5
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About this ebook
This “absorbing history of the Ordnance Survey”—the first complete map of the British Isles—"charts the many hurdles map-makers have had to overcome” (The Guardian, UK).
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 Ordnance Survey is a much beloved British institution, and this is—amazingly—the first popular history to tell the story of the map and the men who dreamt and delivered it.
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.
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 Ordnance Survey is a much beloved British institution, and this is—amazingly—the first popular history to tell the story of the map and the men who dreamt and delivered it.
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.
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Reviews for Map of a Nation
Rating: 3.803278773770492 out of 5 stars
4/5
61 ratings12 reviews
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5If you are into maps this is well worth reading
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The British Ordnance Survey is respected the world over, but often underestimated in value by us Brits. Its true value only becomes apparent when we travel abroad and find we cannot get maps of foreign parts with the same range, detail and authority as we can at home. We always seem somewhat bemused that something we take for granted at home is considered a luxury at best and a military secret at worst when we travel. Hewitt provides an excellent and stirring history of the Ordnance Survey and the development of the first complete map of the British Isles and Ireland. Written from a love of maps and from being charmed by the largely eccentric group of men who drove and led the efforts to produce a single map Hewitt has produced a lively and interesting tale of the hardships and daring of these men. Could have done with more maps as illustrations!
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Meticulously researched, as highly detailed as the maps whose story it relates.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Fascinating account of the Ordnance survey and mapping of Britain
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5Was this a PhD thesis that was published? I have a great interest in the subject matter, but I found this tome totally unreadable. Too much detailed (almost pedantic) information about minute things, not enough readable history of the survey.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5One of the most fascinating books I have read for a long time, with the added savour of utter serendipity. I stumbled across it by chance and decided to give it a go.On the face of it a history of the Ordnance Survey might not sound particularly enthralling but in fact this book proved utterly gripping. Starting in the months immediately following the defeat of the Jacobite army at Culloden it covers the various attempts, driven by military necessity, to develop a reliable system of maps to enable the government more comprehensively to know about the exact extent and nature of the country, and how local and regional issues might more readily be addressed.The whole process encompassed mastery of geometry, trigonometry, engineering, astronomy, geology and geography, and was eventually to take decades. As was the case with so much government policy during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, there was a fair peppering of Francophobia thrown in too, which is never wholly ungratifying!This is another of those technical histories, in the tradition of Dava Sobel's "Longitude" or Mark Kurlansky's "Cod", which repay the reader's curiosity, and might just prove to be an unforeseen commercial success. I certainly hope so.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5This is an interesting history of how the first Ordnance Survey map of England & Wales came to be produced and published in 1870. The story starts over 100 years earlier, with the problems the military had in pursuing the clansmen after Culloden - there was no map to refer to - all the geographical knowledge was in the heads of the locals. this progresses from a survey for purely military purposes, through estate maps of the landed gentry to wide ranging linguistic, geologic, naturalistic and geographic surveys of the British Isles (plus further flung territories). The various characters that played a prominent role in the undertaking are described and it is quite an engaging read, not simply a dry recitation of dates.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Interesting account of the origins of the Ordnance Survey, stretching back to the aftermath of Culloden in 1746 and full of Scottish input, particularly in the early years. We take maps for granted (and did so long before GPS etc), yet it took over a century to complete the 'first series' maps of the UK and Ireland.
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5Lots of detail and anecdotes about the people involved in setting up the Ordnance Survey, their families, their ideas, their ambitions, even their pet dogs, but precious little about the actual making of the maps which was a bit disappointing. Covers only the early formation of the survey and stops in about 1840 or so. I would have liked a bit less of Wordsworth and a bit more about the technicalities.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Puts the Ordinance Survey right on the map :). Something we walkers and scramblers have always loved, maps carried next to our hearts across the hills and through the rain, sleet and (rarely) burning sun. Winter nights on the kitchen table plotting routes. And 20 years ago wished for abroad in countries where whole hillsides seemed to be missing from the local maps! A moment in time just as the world changes - GPS, SATNAV, satellite pictures. The author places the start of the Ordinance Survey firmly in the military world, beginning with the Highland clearances and wars with France, continuing with Ireland and the the mapping for taxation, the massive social implications of fixing place names and not forgetting the struggle of the 20th century for access to land. The military, economic and political setting gives the book a real bite without detracting from the heroics of the multitude of people who walked the land actually doing the mapping.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Packed full of great history and research, but Hewitt hasn't got Peter Moore's knack of telling the story so you can thoroughly revel but also retain. So saying, it will stay with me as a terrific reference book and one to dip into, now I know what treasures lurk inside.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Maybe I was expecting too much, given all the good press this book got when first published, but I thought it was only all right.I liked the way Hewitt placed the significance of map making within contemporary culture - military need, popular culture (poetry, Enlightenment, tourism), social change (road improvements, enclosure, rise of the city), scientific advances in instrument making and mathematics. I didn't like the sometimes disjointed style, the occasionally weird asides, it not knowing whether to be serious history or popular history, and its at times gossipy tone.I was interested in the men who worked on the Ordnance Survey, I was less interested in reading extracts from poems, or hearing about the lives of Wordsworth and Coleridge. I get why they appeared in the book, for the context they brought, but I'd rather buy a biography of them as individuals than read snippets of their lives as an aside in a history of map making.
Book preview
Map of a Nation - Rachel Hewitt
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